Last night and tonight we stayed in Laramie, Wyoming and Winnemucca, Nevada, but tonight I am blogging about Iowa and Nebraska.

Collections of enormous windmills have been cropping up frequently since we crossed the Mississippi. In the very first one we saw driving west from Des Moines, the numerous 3-pronged turbines extended along the highway through a 10-minute drive and as far as I could see on either side, and were arranged in irregular groupings of 2 or 3, or 4 or 5, each group with different internal positioning, as though they were socializing at a cocktail party. The desultory and varying paces of their spinning underscored the impression of leisure, rather than the work of generating power.  The wide spacing between groupings, combined with the rolling hills of Iowa, gave the pleasant effect of an organic shape, like flowing water or the branches of trees. I surmised the arrangement was dictated by patterns of wind flow. However, all subsequent wind farms were grouped in a rectilinear manner, ranging from scattered short segments to soldierly arrays, so I discarded that theory.

As you will know if you have viewed the factory farm map (www.factoryfarmmap.org), Iowa and Nebraska are home to many large CAFOs, and I had hoped to see one, though I expected it to be an unpleasant experience, based on a description by an eye-witness I met at a party last December. Along Interstate 80 in both states, however, we saw nary a one. A few times we smelled a trace of ordure which persisted for a minute or two as we sped along, and we wondered at its source. Instead of CAFOs, we saw multiple herds of 20 to 100 relaxed, glossy, black cows grazing at will over spacious, enticing fields, some lolling in the grass, not a rancher in sight, and with fences spaced so widely as to be unnoticeable. We saw no other farm animals, and no factory farm lots or buildings of any size. An observer would deduce that Midwest beef is exclusively grass-fed. My theory is that these states have purposefully populated the highly-trafficked routes with tourist-friendly farm images, yet I doubt myself; that explanation implies such a high level of collusion among so many entities.

Theorizing is clearly not my forte.