My month in Iowa

My take on Iowa

where I went this month

This is going to be a less organized assessment than usual, mainly because my month in Iowa was much less organized than usual.

In fact, my month in Iowa started in May 2021.  I went to the Newton/East Des Moines KOA for the first week then, just as I did this time.  But the whole time I was there I was really sick and just couldn't seem to shake it - low fever, diarrhea, low energy.  At the time, my cabin door kept flying open unexpectedly and I couldn't find anyone in the area to fix it.  So I finally gathered up the tatters of my health and my RV door and went back to sponge off my poor brother and sister-in-law.

My month in November 2022 wasn't really much better.  The weather became quite cold very soon after we got here, no campgrounds in the state had water/showers/laundry available, and then my graywater tank froze halfway through the month and I couldn't empty it, when more snow and more very cold weather were on their way.  I spent 5 days traveling to and from a warmer part of the country to thaw things out.  So it turns out those 5 days I was gone were supplemented by the 5 days I spent here in 2021.  I didn't get to see anything Iowan either time, but at least I was here.

So with my physical presence fragmented, it's not surprising many of my impressions are too.

One thing I can say for certain: Iowa is a farming state, and Iowans take pride in that.  The state of Iowa also points with pride to its increasing manufacturing and tech industries, a good thing for everyone given the hurdles farmers face in getting a good crop to market.

I got the impression Iowa was also trying to figure out how to encourage tourism, which may be an uphill battle since few people think, hey - let's take our vacation in Iowa this year!  But they're trying hard to develop things people might be interested in visiting, and I was sorry to miss out on so many of them.  Iowa is very much a tourist season/not tourist season state and most attractions were closed beginning in the early fall.

As I pointed out somewhere during the month, Iowa's got quite a few cities, but I think most of them would be classified as large towns in a more populated state.

Iowa is defined by its farms and its rivers - specifically the Missouri River and the Mississippi River, the 2 largest rivers in the country.  And Iowa and Missouri are the only states that have both of them.

I'm guessing that in every season but winter Iowa is beautiful, not least because of its agrarian nature.  I'm sorry I couldn't see it in May of last year as I'd intended, because I think it would have been perfect.  But in November - the end of fall and beginning of winter - it really didn't have a lot of physical beauty, I'm sorry to say.  Just miles of fallow cropland and lots of trees (especially nice after a month in treeless Nebraska).

This same weather kept me from seeing what Iowa insists are hordes of enthusiastic bicyclists.  Which is just as well as the roads don't seem big enough to accommodate them and traffic.

I was surprised to find that Iowa is an enthusiastic collector of recycling - I found drop-off stations all over the state.  Conversely, I was also surprised to find such terrible roads.  And I don't know why they would be.  Online they say that Iowa ranks 25th out of the 50 states in household income, which makes it sound like they could afford better roads than they have.

Speaking of roads, Iowa has 3 official license plates.

Actually, this is the main state plate, but most people have the one with the yellow.

Iowa puts the resident's county's name
on each plate.

Not quite as common as the yellow one.

I took this photo in a hurry, not looking at the plate
but instead just taking a pic before the owner came
back and got mad.  Now that I see it, I'm glad I did.

In general, drivers here were nice.  Actually, the people in general here were very nice.  The Iowans I talked to were usually very glad to be living where they were.  Some commented on the bad weather, but I didn't hear anybody say they were planning to leave because of it.

Just a decade ago, Iowa was considered a swing state; now almost everyone agrees it's turned red.  What they don't agree on is whether it might stay that way or swing back again.  I saw quite a few Trump-type signs and flags in the state, but not as many as I expected in a red state.  I wondered if the Jan. 6th committee hearings might have had an impact, or maybe the news of him stashing away top secret documents in his Mar-a-Lago desk, which wasn't exactly a secure location.  My impression is that these folks are solid Americans living a traditional American life and glad to be doing it.