March 25, P.M.  North Vernon, Indiana.

I drove all day today, needing to make some miles. Missouri, from my perspective along Highway 50, is like Kansas, massive, all-expansive food fields. The difference, again from my perspective, was all the huge houses I saw in Missouri. I would drive past fields for miles. Then there would be a long driveway lined by trees or significant walls, leading to a huge, newly built house. I imagine that farming at this scale can be very lucrative. (I found this on my feed from Alternet, so consider the source.) According to the map, a slight detour would take me along the north side of the Missouri River.

I loved the drive, even though the River itself was out of sight and I only saw it when I crossed the mighty river. (It was so wide that my I-phone GPS screen turned entirely blue as I crossed. The river, however, isn't blue. It is dull gray-brown. Later, I crossed the Mississippi and made this video: 

       
                                    

Thinking more about Tallgrass Prairie. 

I thought more about the efforts to preserve some of the last remaining grasslands in one part of Kansas, while in another the efforts to preserve Dodge City are based on the history of destroying the nature and culture which the grasslands supported--This destruction was planned and implemented by the U.S. Government. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they were doing the best they could given the knowledge and information available to them at the time. I wonder about what it might be in the future that we might look back upon and wish we'd known more. What do we have in abundance now that we are taking for granted, that we are willing to give up because we don't yet have the knowledge we need to know its full value? Why can't we learn from the past about protecting that which we don't yet have necessary knowledge to fully appreciate? Or, like every generation, do we really believe we have accumulated all possible and necessary knowledge? 

Highway 50 is so fickle. It divides in places. It lets me down at times,  sacrificing itself to an interstate. Around big cities (Kansas City, St. Louis) it enters and tangles like a red thread thrown into a junk drawer with thick dark cords, only to reappear on the other side. Between big cities, it's great. Between massive fields, Indiana is very wooded. Between woods, however, many of the small towns I've passed through have the disease--the

North Vernon, Indiana

Neon Nightmare disease of a decaying town center but the outskirts growing with the cancer of franchise hell. How did this happen?  I might be wrong, but I think that in Kansas I was better able to predict the 'small-towness' of a town based on the font size used to delineate it on the map--the smaller the lettering the less chance of Neon Hell. Not so in Indiana. I know-- I'm probably generalizing. I don't think I would have done this had I not had a few extra days to make this drive. Spending all day on Interstate Highways and nights in Neon Hell (eating in Pizza Hut, Wendy's; sleeping in Quality Inn, Fairview Inn, Comfort Inn for five days straight) would have made me crazy. Plus, I don't think I'm taking that much more time. I'm driving 65-70 mph. Yes, Highway 50 isn't quite as direct as I-70, but I know that the diversity of what I'm seeing makes the long days speed by. Starting tomorrow, I'll need to make some decisions about going north.

Many "pro-life" signs today, reminding me that we need to take back that term. The 'pro-lifers' are really 'pro-birthers' and don't care much for life, especially life other than human-life. I'm pro all life, any living thing, all life-force, of which we humans are an integral, but small part. One sign said something like, "Smile: Your mother chose life". Are these people suggesting that my mother considered aborting her unborn baby?  I wonder what David (Foster Wallace) would write about this.

Since leaving Colorado, I've seen one cyclist (east of Jefferson City, Missouri, which by the way, is considered the center of America) and one jogger in downtown Bedford, Indiana.