You ought to give Iowa a try

Before our latest cross-country trip we had never spent time in Iowa. We didn't know what we'd see, except the Andy Goldsworthy sculptures near Grinnell and in Des Moines. I assumed in my ignorance that Iowa would be flat. It's not. And the rolling hills were lush with corn in mid-September, making for lovely landscapes.

Iowa cornfield

Iowa cornfield 2

We also visited the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, which preserves tallgrass prairie, oak savanna and sedge meadows. It too was very beautiful, and we enjoyed their educational center as well (did you know that some prairie grasses have roots 12 feet deep?). Wild sawtooth sunflowers combined with grasses and other wild plants to form a lovely mosaic. They use fire, seeding and, in one 700 acre enclosure, bison to reconstruct and preserve the prairie ecosystem. Very cool.

Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge