Land of Ten Thousand Lakes

You leave the city of Omaha in your rearview mirror. The lights of the city fade away into the dark morning. The eastern sky is an iridescent array of pink and orange. The peachy color floods the sky and fades into a dark, deep blue in the west. After an excellent nights sleep everything seems to be more vivid in color. The grass is greener, the barns are beaming red, and the sun is even brighter yellow. Puffy clouds sit in the sky like whipped marshmellows plumped in spots here and there.

You follow the freeway to Iowa. You enter through Council Bluffs, which is rather small compared to Des Moines and Omaha. It is quiet and you pass mostly semis. It looks like even the farms are still asleep, except for one where an old farmer rides on his red Farmall tractor.

After you get out of town everything except for the freeway is still. The green corn crops line the freeway like armies of soliders in different formations. A light fog sits overs the fields. Horses graze and cows chew their cud. A dog runs amok with a toddler chasing after him. 

You avoid the hassle of going through Des Moines and take some back roads around. The little towns are quaint and cheery. They are so small everyone knows everything about everyone else. Shopkeepers arrive early to get theiron businesses ready for the day. In one town you pass through you see a group of old men sitting in a diner.

The highway ends at the freeway north of

Des Moines.  A little while later you reach Minnesota. The "Land of Ten Thousand Lakes" is green everywhere. The grass is shorter and the trees are thinner. You stop in Minneapolis and go to the Mall of America for lunch and walk around  for an hour or so. The mall is 5 stories tall and has hundreds of stores. After you are finished you hit the road again. You pass many lakes and ponds as the nickname sugests.

The land goes dark and all of the dark farmland around you allows you to see the beautiful night sky. Beautiful stars fill the night sky. There is only a sliver of moon that floats in the sky. The stars are amazing and light up the land to some extent. You can make out the shadows of tall trees and fields of crops. You also make out small, black herd of cattle. You make out shadows of vehicles, farm equipment, buildings, and grain silos. Memories of your grandfather's old farm boil to the top of your conscience. It seems like only a week ago you were visiting him on the farm. Time flys so fast. After all he is gone and in just a couple days you will be starting your senior year of high school. It seems like so many of us waste our lives worrying over the smallest of details, but we miss the big ones. It comes back to haunt us. We all have ghosts, our pasts. You start to feel drowsy. You try to watch, but there is a hidden force shutting your eyes. You fall asleep while your parents are still driving.