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Trip over - page 5
Day 10 – La Crosse WI to Clinton IA
I drove along the Mississippi River for most of the morning, but it was an awful day for taking pictures. It was a dark overcast day, with no definition in the sky. Just a low-light colorless dreary white. So I did not get any Mississippi pictures worth showing. In many cases, the sky is like the canvas that you paint on … through your camera. It's important to start out with an attractive canvas to end up with attractive images. On days like this, I typically end up throwing away most of the pictures I took. I crossed into Iowa, and saw some interesting patterns in the corn fields.
I enter Clinton, and I am back in a Motel 6. This one seems to have people living here. This whole town stinks, due to a big ADM Plant (Archer Daniels Midland) on the Mississippi. It smelled kind of like fermenting corn.
Day 11 – Clinton IA to Indianapolis IN
Another day of dismal photo atmospherics. I found Illinois quite dull. Nothing to see but corn. I am so deep in the Corn Belt now, I don’t know if I will ever make it out. This is the only day that I do not take any pictures. After hours of driving, I make it to the largest city that I will stay in on the entire trip. Indianapolis. I tried to avoid the big cities on this trip, with traffic jams being a top reason. It is late afternoon on a Wednesday, and I get in a traffic jam on the Indianapolis beltway. I stay at another Motel 6, and notice again that people are living there. One way you can determine that is by the oil spots in the parking spaces, where junker cars loaded up with belongings have been parked there for several days. There seems to be a small community of people who are teetering between living out of their cars, and living at the Motel 6.
Day 12 – Indianapolis IN to Parkersburg WV
I left Indianapolis early, so I could get out to the cornfields before sunrise. The bad picture taking weather had finally broken, so I was anxious to get started. There was a low lying mist clinging to the fields that I found quite appealing. The picture to the left was shortly before sunrise, and the one to the right was after sunrise. The mist does not last very long after sunrise.
Right as the sun peeked out, I was in my car, so I followed my rule of quickly stopping and rushing out with my tripod to take a picture of whatever is in front of the sun.
In this case, it happened to be some earth moving equipment.
I like the cornfields in the early morning. This field had flowers on the vine mixed in with the dead corn stalks.
A little down the road was another field with these colorful flowers. I like the way these vibrantly alive flowers intermingle with the lifeless corn. The early sun popped out from behind the clouds, so I could use a polarizer filter to help with the color saturation.
A little closer in shows that these are Morning Glories. This was by far the most delightful scene I came across east of the Mississippi. This was all just 15 minutes or so east of the Indianapolis city limits.
I spent a lot of time checking out this particular cornfield. I even gave my macro lens a workout.
I finally got moving along, and drove around some more on the county roads almost to the Ohio border. I did not notice any other cornfields full of flowers as fine as this one. I drove across Ohio pretty much without incident. Here are a couple of scenes from the south eastern hill country of Ohio. I was finally breaking out of the Corn Belt.
Here is a night shot of the bridge crossing the Ohio River into Parkersburg, West Virginia.
I checked into the Travel Lodge in Parkersburg. It was one of the better places I stayed at. After the last two nights at Motel 6’s, I was ready for a good place.
Day 13 – Parkersburg WV to Frederick MD
West Virginia for the most part, was not even close to peak colors. Other than some isolated pockets, it was still green. It was a few weeks too early for the W. Virginia colors.
I did find one spot that presented a somewhat colorful scene. This was on Hwy 50 somewhere between Parkersburg and Clarksburg.
The rest of the day was freeway driving to my brother’s house just east of Frederick MD. And so ended my 3746 mile drive across the country.
Maryland
I stayed at my brothers place in Ijamsville, with is just to the east of Frederick MD. This is in a rural setting surrounded by farmlands, but only 40 minutes from Washington DC. There were some great country and farm scenes that I noticed, especially right after sunrise when the mist was still hugging the ground.
After 10 days in Maryland, I head back across the country, this time taking a more southern route. So if you liked this “Trip across America”, get ready, here comes the trip back .....
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