Nebraska!

--On our way from NY, I90 went thru Elkhart, Indiana--RV capital of the US. huge factories with endless lots of RVs and motorhomes. We tooted "hello".
--Greg, Bonnye, and Michael: thanks for pointing us to Pandora for tailored music listening, NPR podcasts, and hysterically funny urbanspoon for restaraunts.
--Once we hit western Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska we hit serious farm country. Each field was a square mile or more! This is where the country grows food; not the 5 acre fields in New England. We even passed a corn-to-ethanol refinery.
---There were also gigantic national truck distribution warehouses for major chainstores. We were  at the middle of the interstate highway system, and no-joke more than half the vehicles on the rode were trucks. Seeing is better than reading, nearly everything this country uses moves by truck.
--- We're in Grand Island, Nebraska; the ranger checking us in said "hope we don't get Serious weather with the thunderstorms tonight". Lots of rain, but no tornado watches.
--We did go to the Museum of the Pioneers in Stuhr. I'm learning that people have always been creative and industrious problem solvers. The Pawnee lodge below is the inside of an earth covered communal house shared by a group of 30-50 people. Seems like a great way to make life on the historic prairie better.

I think of modern engineering and manufacturing as coming of age in the 1950's, but here is a miniature cufflink watch from the 1920s apparently owned by a local family in Nebraska.

The history re-enactor for the hardware store was 97 years old. He told us firsthand about growing up with most of the things in the store. (The historic town was from 1912.) He said "Oh yes the town had electricity when he was little, but it didn't come out to farms until the 1940's." The blacksmith below, showed told us about how investor/planners who wanted to start a new town along the railroad would go recruit a blacksmith to do all the essential metalworking that would be needed by a community. While he talked, he welded the ends of the hanger he's holding by using borax as flux and pounding the redhot iron together-- no modern welding techniques at all!

Oh, and while working on this post the tv channel showed a thunderstorm warning, tornado watch, but it has already moved east to Kansas......lots of rain today! We're glad to be in a trailer!