IA Day 44 Thursday July 21, 2022 Moved from Gretna NE to Newton Iowa

 IA Day 44  Thursday July 21, 2022 Moved from Gretna NE to Newton Iowa

This is one of those..."not much happened today " days. When you travel 165 miles on one highway  and drive from point to point,  you can talk about the scenery (which I will) and the stops you made to stretch or  pottie breaks or filling the tank with gasoline, ($3.65)  and that's about all there is. Oh! Except the heavy traffic on I-80 especially the trucks. It was so entertaining that for awhile Ruth kept track of the colors of the trucks that we saw on both sides of the highway. Of course there are more white ones (by design) than any others so she went to the colors. Her research,  of a couple of hours, showed that red trucks outnumber blue by a small margin. But, when she started counting RV's it was a surprising result. The most often seen camping rig was the pull along trailer, followed by the Fifth heeel, then the motorhome an finally the Class 3  rig. Who would have thought it?  Of course who would have surveyed it? In the first place?

We ran across a type of planting here in hilly Iowa, that we saw only briefly in Nebraska and that was the terrace planting. And now that it is harvest time (for winter wheat and hay) we can see how effective that is. Research shows that they have modifed that over the years. Earlier  they would bank the dropline with sod and that would hold the moisture . Today they use grass on the dropline and that does the same thing, only added now, at times  are pipes that help move the water to a different level when needed.  This type of planting is used on slopes of 1-6% grade.

Some of the terracing of the corn crop.

A closer look at the way that terracing has been built

 

 Western Iowa is NOT flat. It is very hilly and has a number of small woodlots thrown in. The key crops are still beans, hay and corn with an emphasis on the latter.  Iowa produced 2 and one half million bushels in 2020 which is 16% of the US corn. Together with Nebraska, Illinois and Minnesota they produce 54% of the USA corn. Iowa also produces oats and hay, red clover, flaxseed, rye and wheat. The primary fruits produced in Iowa are apples.

 This state is very proud of its heritage and history, especially the farming aspect. One 'rest area' had a huge display of farmng since the beginning to indicte how much soil had been lost in 150 year of farming. The top soil had gone from 23 inches in 1850, to 5 inches today!!! Many antique stores,too.

One aspect of Iowa that surprised us was the amount of Wind Power generation that is present. More than 40% of ALL of Iowa's electric needs  come from wind generation. It produces over 10,000 megawatts from 5,590 wind generators,

A few of the 5, 590 wind generators in Iowa.

 

The extreme heat of the previous week has weakened a bit as the high today was just 87 F.  Tonight will be the coolest in two weeks at 66 F by 6:00 AM.  It is still sunny all day  with a 50% chance of rain tomorrow.  I doubt that, but the last time I said that, we had a tornado warning. It rained amd the wind blew hard.

 I looked up eating places here in Newton, Iowa, and checked the local Pizza Hut. It seems that it has been closed since the first year of the pandemic, because of the bankruptcy of NPC, the mother company of some 300  Pizza Huts in this area. They are 1 Billion $ in dept due labor and food costs  especially brought to home by the pandemic. The unemploymentrate for  Iowa is 2.7% .

Tomorrow we head for Peru IL and another one night stand. We will be joining the Saturday traffic on the I-80 corridor to get to Michigan.