We spent all day yesterday driving across Nebraska and Kansas, ending the day in Kansas City, Missouri. There is a LOT of corn here … miles and miles of it. Here’s Dale out standing in her field of corn:

The ground is really dry here. No surprise, given that it has been 105° F – and we thought it was hot in Florida!

One of the things you see everywhere are grain elevators where the farmers store their corn and grain while they wait for the right price to send it to market. These things are normally located adjacent to railroad tracks for easy shipment.

We learned about grain elevators from a state highway patrolman who pulled over behind us with his lights flashing to tell us we could take all the pictures we wanted, we just needed to pull further off the road. After determining we were harmless Floridians out for a ride across the country, he was very friendly and talked with us for about half an hour, explaining how farming and ranching works in the Great Plains. It was the first time I was ever happy to be pulled over by a trooper.

We are traveling on U.S. Highways, rather than Interstates, in order to see the countryside. And we’ve seen a couple things we would have missed if we had stayed on the road more traveled. One was the geographic center of the United States:

Another was the last standing original Pony Express station. Dale is in training to ride for Pony Express if they ever come back.

Today we’ll be in Branson, Missouri.