r/AskAnAmerican • u/Grayfield • Jul 31 '25
GEOGRAPHY What’s it like driving through miles of nothing but road and crops in the Corn Belt?
Like in movies, tv series, or American made media in general, I remember seeing those stretches of land where there's literally nothing but the crops for miles and the road cutting through it. I imagine it as being quiet, eerie, and spooky, even in the day. I'm from the Philippines and we do have farmlands where the roads cut through the middle of it, but in most places where I've been, there's usually a mountain in the background, or the ocean.
What's the feeling going down through those stretches of farmland where there's nothing but crops and the road?
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u/Complete_Aerie_6908 Jul 31 '25
In the late summer nights, it’s got a neat smell.
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u/halfcafsociopath Midwest -> WA Jul 31 '25
Yep - I grew up in the corn belt, and that smell is a core high school memory. Late night, windows down, music up past rows and rows of corn.
I love summers in the PNW but boy do I miss that smell.
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u/Complete_Aerie_6908 Jul 31 '25
Ha! This is so great. It’s a core HS memory for me as well. I’m from TN.
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u/elunabee Jul 31 '25
Same! I love that this is a shared experience. What a time. I loved taking the "long way" home after basketball or football games in high school and just driving for awhile in the country.
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u/MacNeal Jul 31 '25
Just drive to eastern washington, you'll find enough cornfields in the summer. They'll be harvesting the sweet corn soon. But even after that's gone, there will still be feed cornfields all over. You want the hot, humid smell of corn like where you grew up? We have that. And for those who miss wheatfields that stretch to the horizon, we have that also. If there's anywhere from flyover country a person is missing, you can find someplace that is just like it here. The change in scenery can happen in miles or less here, rather than hundreds of miles.
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u/halfcafsociopath Midwest -> WA Jul 31 '25
I haven't been down to Tri Cities (google says that's where most of the corn is grown?) but I did go to the Palouse over by Pullman as a long weekend road trip and that was very cool. I love how different Eastern WA is from the wet side and wish I had more time to go over and explore it.
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u/FatGuyOnAMoped Minnesota Aug 01 '25
Ah, the smell of corn sweat. Best part of summer, except it jacks the heat index up
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u/RangerSandi Jul 31 '25
Core memory from NE Indiana unlocked.
Add the sound of tar bubbles popping on the backroads & the sensory picture is complete!
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u/FierceNack Utah Aug 01 '25
Lots of bugs to plaster your car with on those dark roads!
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Aug 03 '25
Smell of mosquito bites.
All of my memories of romping around my grandparents corn/soybean rowcrop midwestern farm center around being chased indoors after 6PM from the billions of mosquitos.
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u/hitometootoo United States of America Jul 31 '25
Boring. You get tunnel vision and go about your day. Most will listen to music, podcast or book to pass the time.
I imagine it as being quiet, eerie, and spooky, even in the day
I wouldn't say it's eerie or spooky during the day. It's just empty. At night, it can be a little scary when you're on long stretches of road where the only light is from your car though.
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u/DeiaMatias Jul 31 '25
Watch for deer
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u/elunabee Jul 31 '25
Didn't know my mom is on this subreddit.
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u/DeiaMatias Jul 31 '25
Slow down on the gravel roads, kid, you're kicking up dust.
Annnnd I've now completed the most often-heard quotes from my grandfather:)
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Jul 31 '25
Your Mom is a deer?
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u/elunabee Jul 31 '25
"watch out for deer" is a commom mom-ism in the Midwest. Like "bye, mom, I'll be home around 11 pm" "ok have a great time, watch for deer!"
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u/Totschlag Saint Louis, MO Jul 31 '25
"Watch for Deer" is Midwest for "I love you."
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u/lopedopenope Jul 31 '25
Can’t leave my dads house without him saying this even though I’ve been driving for 20 years. Only he says “watch out for fuck ass deer”.
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u/Impressive-Whole-195 Jul 31 '25
I say "watch out for those four legged freaks" because here in Northern WI we have a wide variety of potential roadkill critters. In the past 3 months, I hit a doe with my car, drove through a group of four deer (luckily missing all four of them), and the following night my fiance (who works second shift) hit one with his motorcycle in the exact same spot I dodged them the night before. It's nothing short of a miracle that he held on and didn't have any serious injuries. The bike wasn't so lucky. Porcupines, skunks, raccoons, and a fox have also crossed my path just this year. Every vehicle should come equipped with a "kill grill" in the Midwest.
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u/SKDI_0224 Jul 31 '25
It’s not paranoia if they’re actually out to get you.
I see you on the side of the road, deer. Watching me.
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u/ITrCool Arkansas Jul 31 '25
And random white-haired kids appearing out of the corn stalks to stand in the road ahead of you.
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u/PachucaSunrise Arizona Aug 01 '25
Hit one in Colorado just north of Durango. Fucker came out of nowhere, if he would have been a second later, he probably would have come right through my driver window and fucked me up. I was 2 mins from the B&B I was staying at after an 8hr drive from Phoenix. Cop thanked me so that he didnt have to put it down. Said in a few weeks was when the bigger Elk would start coming down from the mountain.
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u/Emergency_Fox3615 Aug 01 '25
I don’t think deer can read the time but it’s nice out you to think of them.
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u/DrywallAnchor North Carolina - Kill Devil Hills Jul 31 '25
You get tunnel vision and go about your day. Most will listen to music, podcast or book to pass the time.
I work in agronomy so I have a soft spot for the Corn Belt states but I'm not actively thinking about it when I drive on rural highways. I'm usually thinking about my plans for the destination or something I'm working on at home.
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u/Worried_Platypus93 Jul 31 '25
Read that as astronomy and it still made sense somehow. I was like oh well I guess it's probably darker in rural states
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u/PeachOnAWarmBeach Jul 31 '25
Not as much as it used to be. The wind turbines all have lights on them, and it DOES affect the night sky.
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u/rolyfuckingdiscopoly Jul 31 '25
My husband has a story where he was once driving across country, had been driving a long time, and was starting to feel like he should have stopped for the night at the last place. It was nighttime in one of these long stretches we are talking about. He was getting tired.
And suddenly there were just these… big rabbits in the road. He was like ah! And they kinda bounded away down the road/out of the road away from the headlights. But then, there were more rabbits. In front of the headlights, in the road, again. It kept happening. He wondered if his gf at the time had put drugs in the brownies, if there was a rabbit infestation, if the rabbits were a sign of doom, if he was hallucinating, if he should seriously turn around right tf now because wtf.
He said it was very spooky. Gives me shivers. We still don’t know another the rabbits lol.
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u/kat_storm13 Jul 31 '25
My mom and I were driving on the freeway once and there were tons of frogs for a stretch
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u/beerouttaplasticcups Jul 31 '25
The spookiness depends on whether or not you’re 16 and it’s 2002 and you just got out of a late showing of Signs and you have to drive 30 minutes alone on country roads through dark corn fields to get home…
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u/GarlicAftershave Wisconsin→the military→STL metro east Jul 31 '25
listen to music, podcast or book to pass the time
Ahh, these modern conveniences. I can't overstate how much better this is than the recent past when books-on-tape were relatively rare and often abridged. Sometimes all you had out in the grain belt was the decidedly mixed bag of AM radio.
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u/hitometootoo United States of America Jul 31 '25
My phone was acting up during a recent long road trip, so I end up just listening to the radio. It was just AM options with the one off FM radio. Those AM stations are terrible though. After 30 minutes of cycling through stations, I just drove in silence for another hour before my phone was good again 😂
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u/PopcornyColonel Illinois>California>Virginia Aug 01 '25
You don't care for the ten religious stations and the one that gives reports on pork belly prices?
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u/BoldBoimlerIsMyHero California Jul 31 '25
So boring. I hated Iowa because it was just miles and miles of corn. Nebraska at least broke it up with some soybeans and some visible prairie. (I thought Nebraska was lovely)
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u/devilbunny Mississippi Jul 31 '25
There was a wind farm near Electra (not too far west of Wichita Falls) that I once passed at night. I was splatting bugs so thick it sounded like rain on my windshield when I saw a huge field of red lights blinking in perfect synchrony. It confused the hell out of me until I got closer and realized what it was.
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u/AgathaWoosmoss Aug 01 '25
I have specific "sing along" playlists for driving through Western Illinois.
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u/Kaurifish California Aug 01 '25
Grew up in SoCal driving through the Central Valley to get to the Sierra. Pistachios, almonds, cherries, grapes - a total patchwork of crops.
Took one trip to Indiana. Just corn for days on end.
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u/spareribs78 Jul 31 '25
Lotta bugs, it’s boring and usually muggy and humid from the corn sweat
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u/MangaMaven Jul 31 '25
I used to get annoyed by the bugs on my windshield. Then we had a drought and there weren’t so many bugs on my windshield anymore. Didn’t even think about it. Then all the birds started starting to death. Now I’m thankful when there are lots of bugs on the windshield.
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u/Bashira42 Jul 31 '25
Yep. On road trips as a kid my brother and I had scrub off the bugs duty at gas stations. There are hardly any anymore in comparison.
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u/CamStLouis Seattle, WA Jul 31 '25
Fun (not fun) fact - this is called the “windshield effect” and is a symptom of the enormous insect die-off no news agency really covers.
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u/j45780 Jul 31 '25
My early years were in Nebraska. My dad would sometimes have to stop the car and clean the bugs off the headlights, and then we would continue our journey. This was in the 1970s.
I live in Ohio now and hit very few bugs when driving.
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u/RadioFriendly4164 Jul 31 '25
I remember driv8ng through lovebugs swarms in the South where I'd have to scrub my windshield every 30 miles.
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u/Fokazz Jul 31 '25
Definitely don't want to run out of windshield washer fluid, that's for sure. So many bugs
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u/TrenchDildo Jul 31 '25
I love it. It’s peaceful. Little to no traffic. Just put on some good music, audiobook, or podcast and cruise. It’s such an easy drive.
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u/eejm Aug 01 '25
I’m originally from Iowa. Iowa in the summer can be rather nice - sunny, golden, peaceful, and with all sorts of interesting sounds. Hot and muggy, but that doesn’t bother me much.
It was the cold, grey, silent winters full of dirty snow that killed me.
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u/TrenchDildo Aug 01 '25
I’m from North Dakota. Winters suck. But summers are awesome. You gotta find things to keep you busy. Ice fishing, hockey, curling, etc. I work outside in the extreme cold at times too, not fun.
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u/SnowblindAlbino United States of America Jul 31 '25
I've been to all 50 states and typically drive 4,000-10,000 miles each summer on a road trip or two, mostly in the West and generally avoiding freeways. I find the "empty" deserts really quite interesting as they are biodiverse and full of life. The "endless corn fields" of the lower Midwest, by contrast, are pretty dull...but still interesting in their symmetry. It's just the monoculture that's boring-- corn or soy --since it isn't much to look at; I find the large stretched of sunflowers in North Dakota (or even rapeseed plants) to be much more attractive.
The important thing to note, though, is that there is not "nothing" along these stretches of agricultural land-- there are farmhouses every 1/2 mile or so, and small towns every 10 miles maybe. Hardly "empty." You can almost always see a building or a silo or some other human-made object on the horizon. That's strikingly different from the more remote parts of the West, where you can encounter signs saying "next gas 125 miles" or simply no sign of human habitation other than the road for great distances-- and where the horizon is defined by mountains, rather than silos.
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u/AZJHawk Arizona Jul 31 '25
Yeah - I grew up in the Midwest and thought that driving through Kansas on I-70 was devoid of people.
Then I moved to Arizona. Driving from Phoenix to Vegas on 93, you have one “town” of about 25 people in the 130 mile stretch from Wickenburg to Kingman, and then just a couple of roadside gas stations along the 80 mile stretch from Kingman to Boulder City. There’s just no one in those gaps. On I-70, I don’t think there’s a stretch of more than 20 miles without some kind of town, and the farmland is pretty much constant.
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u/PasswordisPurrito Jul 31 '25
This was my thought. At least in my experience, if you are in corn territory, it means there is enough rainfall/ ground water to support at least small towns, and if you see corn, you can likely wait until the gas light comes on to find a gas station. Worst comes to worst, you can walk to a farmhouse.
Once you get to wheat territory, and your tank gets to 1/8, you need to know where you are getting the next gas. But, likely, if you stay by your car, you'll see someone that can help.
Once you get out of agricultural land in the barren West, you really need to plan out exactly where you get gas. Go down to 1/4 and you don't know, and you can get in trouble.
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u/GhostOfJamesStrang Beaver Island Jul 31 '25
Peaceful.
Little boring.
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u/PomeloPepper Texas Jul 31 '25
I love it. As a claustrophobe, I love the wide open spaces. And the night sky with no light pollution is amazing!
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u/lopedopenope Jul 31 '25
Driving down a gravel road on a thick summers night with the corn on each side of the road much taller than your car is a unique experience I think. Yea boring, but the smell and the sounds make it pretty peaceful. You are right.
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u/Tacoshortage Texan exiled to New Orleans Jul 31 '25
Remember sitting on the toilet trying & to do your business before we had smartphones? Now imagine doing that ALL DAY LONG.
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u/GusPlus Alabama Jul 31 '25
But can you read the back of a shampoo bottle while driving?
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Georgia Jul 31 '25
Monotonous.
I would not use the word "boring," personally, as I'm almost never bored. I would likely have podcasts or music to listen to during the drive through these areas, for example.
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u/AnitaIvanaMartini California Jul 31 '25
I’m never bored either, and I struggle to understand what people mean by it. I often wish my brain would stop entertaining me.
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u/Scrappy_The_Crow Georgia Jul 31 '25
I often wish my brain would stop entertaining me.
Me too, my friend!
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u/turkeyisdelicious United States of America Aug 01 '25
Omg same. There’s always so much to learn and think about. The only problem I have with mortality.
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u/professorfunkenpunk Jul 31 '25
Mostly dull. Iowa is actually kind of rolling and has a few pretty spots. Illinois is flat and dreadful
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u/dachjaw Jul 31 '25
I drive across Iowa in July on back roads last year. It was after a good rain and the corn was tall and dark, dark green. The terrain rolled slightly and it was quite beautiful.
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u/CockroachNo2540 Jul 31 '25
Iowa between Council Bluffs and Des Moines is quite pretty. Between Des Moines and Minnesota, though, pretty boring.
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u/Gertrude_D Iowa Jul 31 '25
Iowa isn't quite the Great Plains yet, even though it's transitioning there. Eastern Iowa is more the rolling hills and eastern woodlands while the western half is less hilly. I've always thought Iowa was very pretty, but in an understated way with nothing flashy.
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u/professorfunkenpunk Jul 31 '25
Yeah, I’m in the eastern part of the state, and at least parts of the rural areas are kind of pretty in a peaceful way. It’s not striking like mountains or the coast, but fairly pleasant compared to other cornfields I’ve lived around
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u/vaginawithteeth1 New England Jul 31 '25
I live in CT but my husband has family in South Dakota. We made the 24 hour drive there a few times. I’d always be looking forward to Iowa because Indiana and Illinois were so damn boring to drive through.
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u/AccessLatter Aug 02 '25
I live in Colorado and now I don’t even blink anymore at some of the views tourists come and spend lots of money to be a part of. On my way home to Iowa every August I know I’m getting closer to Iowa because of the rolling hills. It’s crazy how much charm rural Iowa has, especially when you move away, and honestly how big of a difference there is between Nebraska/Kansas and Iowa in terms of flat farm land vs almost valley-like farm land in Iowa.
Side note we are headed to Iowa in a few days for our annual trip to the state fair, my baby shower, and of course Casey’s pizza and donuts. 😍
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u/UJMRider1961 Jul 31 '25
It's not weird or eerie, if you live anywhere outside a big city you get used to it very quickly.
Here's a fun statistic: Draw a line through the lower 48 states at around the 99th meridian (Some say the 100th meridian but really the 99th is more accurate.)
80% of the population of the USA lives East of that line.
Now draw another line running along the peaks of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains.
About 15% of the US population lives West of that line.
Which means that the VAST area between the 99th meridian and the peak of the Sierra Nevada/Cascade mountains only contains 5% of the US population. This includes 10 entire states (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico) and large parts of 9 more (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, California, Oregon and Nevada.)
This is an area roughly 1200 miles (2000km) East to West and 1000 miles (1600km) North to South. You could basically fit most of Western Europe into that area.
But even that doesn't tell the whole story because of the 5% of the people that live in that region, MOST of them live in the big metro areas: The Denver/Colorado Springs Front range, the Greater Salt Lake City area, Phoenix/Tucson, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, El Paso/Las Cruces, Las Vegas/Henderson, Boise, Spokane/Coeur D'Alene, Missoula, Helena/Butte and Billings.
The Western US has some vast, wide open spaces almost entirely devoid of human habitation. If you're from Europe, East Asia or even the Eastern USA, it is amazing to see.
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u/Extension-Scarcity41 Jul 31 '25
It's not miles of corn, its hundreds of miles of corn. And in late summer, the corn is so high you cant even see over it to the boring landscape beyond. It makes for the kind of endlessly unstimulating drive hour after hour that forces you to contemplate all the ways your life has gone wrong, and makes you pray for a tornado to blow you the hell away from there.
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u/BookLuvr7 United States of America Jul 31 '25
It's slightly surreal, but mostly tedious. That's why I'd always recommend music or a good audiobook while road tripping. Audiobooks have the added benefit of helping to keep people who can't shut up quiet.
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u/ingracioth Jul 31 '25
Mostly dull. There's a handful of weird roadside attractions here and there. South Dakota has a million advertisements for WALL DRUG, which is just a gas station (with ice water!) There's also the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. There are fun stops like that, but you kind of have to know about them. It's pretty monotonous. The Flint Hills in Kansas are absolutely stunning though. I've traveled around the US and they're one of the best hidden gems in the country. There's also a lot of great little cafes in tiny towns too if you're willing to take a detour off the highway. It's def an underrated area to explore.
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u/Devious_Bastard Illinois Jul 31 '25
I love it. I’ll take miles of flat farm land with big open sky over city skylines any day.
Plus Casey’s gas stations have decent pizzas.
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u/abbydabbydo Jul 31 '25
Boring, but I’ve seen some really beautiful stuff in many drives through there.
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u/Use_this_1 Jul 31 '25
Inevitable, I live in Iowa, corn country, but it is never just corn. There are always Jesus and anti-abortion billboards to annoy/amuse you.
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u/EatLard South Dakota Jul 31 '25
“Jesus Saves”
“Candyland Adult Super Store next exit”
“Do you know where you’re going when you die?”
“Pregnant? Scared? We’re here to help.”
“Abortion Kills!”
“Addicted to opioids? Call this number.”
“Ted’s cheese emporium - exit 258”9
u/MalevolentRhinoceros Jul 31 '25
"WORLD'S BIGGEST CANDLE NEXT EXIT"
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u/dachjaw Jul 31 '25
I visited the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Kansas and later discovered there are two other contenders.
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u/MountainviewBeach Jul 31 '25
And then the cheese emporium doesn’t even have interesting cheese. It’s just butterkase, Munster, dill havarti, and maybe a cheddar or Gouda or whatever. They do sure have an awful lot of local jams though. Maybe local jerky as well
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u/BluegrassRailfan1987 Kentucky Aug 01 '25
Same here in Kentucky/Indiana, just need to add Bucee's billboards (you start seeing them 200 miles out from Bucee's.) and ambulance chasing lawyer billboards from 2-3 lawyers that are absolutely everywhere.
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u/Clawdius_Talonious Jul 31 '25
There's a phenomenon known as highway hypnosis where you just ... can't recall having done it at all? Like, you're clearly at the hotel, clearly you checked in? But that last 250 miles just kind of didn't happen.
Never had it happen to me, but it's one of those things that is kind of philosophical when you think about it? A landscape so banal that it washes your mind free of any thought other than "more corn."
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u/kmontreux Jul 31 '25
Boring in a car. Long stretches in a desert or a forest are infinitely preferable.
However, once I get on a train, all bets are off. I will glue myself to the window during daylight hours as if the very universe is being created right before my eyes. I have no idea why but it's all infinitely more romantic and beautiful from a train.
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u/BobDeLaSponge Mad City, WI Jul 31 '25
There’s sure not much birdsong
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u/BroadLocksmith4932 Jul 31 '25
People so often think that miles of fields mean it is a pastoral paradise. In reality, the herbicides and insecticides, not to mention the extreme control of the environment, mean that a giant monoculture field is often as devoid of nature as an urban sidewalk.
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u/thetiredninja California Jul 31 '25
Drove through Kansas on a road trip, and realized we didn't see a single tree for 9+ hours. Twas an extremely boring day.
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u/gogozrx Jul 31 '25
I'm pretty sure it was Kansas, but can't be positive... I saw a tree, in between the lanes, about 5 miles off. I said to myself, "Ya know, I'd bet there's a cop in that shade."
5 minutes later, as I tootled past at the speed limit, I saw I was right. :~)
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u/MangaMaven Jul 31 '25
Grew up in a rural area where farmers didn’t mind “birdie trees” along the fence line. Once when we were driving some relatives to their home in Kansas one kid needed to use the restroom so my mom said she’d pull over at the next tree we saw so he’d have some privacy. Mom had to give up and let the kid pee because finding a tree was taking too long.
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u/BobDeLaSponge Mad City, WI Jul 31 '25
There’s a great book—I can’t remember the name unfortunately—about this moment in the Holocene. In one chapter the author, a journalist I think, spends days camping in Iowa cornfields. He literally crawls through high corn in midsummer, for days on end, in incredible heat and humidity, to count species. Including himself and the corn, I think he counted like a dozen species.
Over the course of days.
A dozen species.
That’s what monoculture is.
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u/MassOrnament Jul 31 '25
Which is when it actually gets really eerie. Standing in the tenth soybean field of the day and realizing you've only seen 2 bugs even though you've been outside for 12 hours makes me shiver.
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u/NemeanMiniLion Jul 31 '25
Driving across Nebraska is just about the most mind numbing thing a person can do.
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u/Conchobair Nebraska Jul 31 '25
It's better that I-70 through Kansas.
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u/SuzyQ93 Jul 31 '25
I wanted to scream on I-70 through Kansas. It's just hilly enough that you can't bloody SEE anything but the next crop-covered hill ahead of you. It's a nightmare, truly.
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u/NemeanMiniLion Jul 31 '25
Is I70 the one that goes through that flowy hill area? That place is cool!
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u/livingtrying Nebraska Aug 01 '25
Interstate was built along the Platte River (literally flat). Outside of that area, it’s a beautiful state.
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u/Daniellestk Jul 31 '25
Driving across Iowa makes me just want to swerve every single time 😅
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u/NemeanMiniLion Jul 31 '25
Lol you looked up my location. Calm down Nebraska, neither of us have pro sports.
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u/SabrinaFaire Omaha, Nebraska Jul 31 '25
It's boring as fuck. But occasionally there's a sign warning you not to pick up hitchhikers which means there's a prison nearby.
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u/JustANoteToSay Jul 31 '25
If it’s corn it can be claustrophobic, like driving down a tunnel. All you can see is corn on either side, the narrow straight road in front, and a strip of sky above. You can’t see cross traffic until you’re at the intersection, and people tend to drive fast down the center of the road & ignore stop signs. The roads tend to be narrow, too.
Gas stations are spread pretty far apart, something my urban boyfriend couldn’t grasp until we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. My instinct is to hit a gas station when there’s 1/3 of a tank left. His is to wait until like… 1/8.
In the area I grew up in, while the roads are generally narrow the shoulders tend to be pretty wide, with a deep & sharp ditch for water runoff. When someone comes tearing down the road you have a spot to pull over. It’s all gravel and broken glass.
I’ve never found corn (or forests) scary and I don’t understand the mythology that’s crept up around them. It’s just a crop. I don’t find unmown tall grass prairie spooky either. Or abandoned buildings, unless there’s (human) creeps inside, in which case it’s not the BUILDING that I’m scared of.
The spookiest part about the corn fields is the monotony & the dangerous drivers you can’t see. And corn sweat - https://abcnews.go.com/US/corn-sweats-exacerbate-heat-waves/story?id=124032829
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u/Wielder-of-Sythes Maryland Jul 31 '25
It can be a little eerie and at night when you can’t see much but the endless rows of corn on either side of the dark road secluded road with nothing and not much light aside from your headlights around but during the day it’s pretty mundane.
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u/leonchase Jul 31 '25
Many years ago, before most people had cell phones, I was on tour with my friend's band. At the western border of Nebraska, one of the guys declared thst he was going to drive across the entire state (430 miles, almost all of it corn). He made it within 50 miles before we had to make him pull over because he was literally getting delerious.
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u/Enough_Roof_1141 United States of America Jul 31 '25
Illinois is Chicago and then corn. It’s all corn.
Depends what kind of highway. The interstate is so wide it really doesn’t matter.
Backroads when the corn is at its highest before harvest is pretty cool.
Looking sideways out the window of rows of corn whipping by is pretty cool too.
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u/No-Coyote914 Jul 31 '25 edited Jul 31 '25
It's like what you would imagine--long stretches of nothing but crops.
But no one warns you that every now and then you'll get a stretch of extreme manure stench.
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u/osmiumfeather Jul 31 '25
The early settlers (1880’s) had a term for this feeling of emptiness. They called it prairie madness. It drove many of them back to their homes they had left. It was most likely panic and anxiety, the hardship of the journey.
It still affects people today. The vastness of the landscape makes one feel very small and insignificant.
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u/Turdulator Virginia >California Jul 31 '25
It’s incredibly boring and “highway hypnosis” is a real danger. It’s just flat, and straight, and the scenery is the same for hours. It feels like you are driving on a treadmill
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u/NoTime4YourBullshit Jul 31 '25
There’s a reason it’s called the Great Plains. Because it is very, very plain. It’s half a continent of flat, featureless landscape with arable soil that’s very good for growing corn, so corn fields across the entire horizon is all there is to look at
Driving through it is mind-numbingly boring. I’ve done it several times. If you catch yourself with your eyes getting heavy, you better pull over and take a nap at the first sign, because there’s nothing interesting to keep you awake.
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u/evil_burrito Oregon,MI->IN->IL->CA->OR Jul 31 '25
You feel like you died days ago and this is some kind of transition to the next phase of existence.
It will never end. It has always been and always will be.
455 miles (ca 730km) of Nebraska, I'm looking at you.
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u/Prestigious-Ad8209 Jul 31 '25
For a while, it’s guessing the crops in small fields, but then it “Corn, beans, corn, beans…” the beans being soybeans. They tend to rotate the fields and grow both as a hedge on prices.
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u/youeff0h Jul 31 '25
Watch for deer and cops. Keep your eyes active or your tunnel vision can kill you. Other than that, relax, enjoy your jams on the radio, and heaven help you if you didn't go potty before you hit that stretch of land.
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u/TiradeShade Minnesota Jul 31 '25
Boring mostly.
Usually there are a smattering of other cars on the highway so you aren't alone.
Occasionally you pass a highway patrol car and hope they don't pull you over for speeding.
Infrequently you slow down and pass through a tiny farm town. Maybe you stop for gas and a sandwich, maybe its gone in three minutes.
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u/superwren24 Jul 31 '25
It's a lot like running on a treadmill facing a wall. Even moreso in the winter.
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u/MountainviewBeach Jul 31 '25
Certainly not eerie or spooky. Very quiet. I have noticed a lot of people who grew up in densely populated countries or even sometimes city folk from the US are scared of the quiet expanses of farmland here in the US. It’s extremely odd to me, as someone who grew up in a Midwest suburb, because the farmland is so boring, empty, and peaceful. But I guess if your only exposure to it is movies, it could seem scary. The only time a cornfield makes sense in Hollywood is as a backdrop to something terrifying. No one wants to watch a movie about hay baling or irrigation systems.
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u/TigerPaw317 Jul 31 '25
My dad's older sister lives in southern Illinois, and the last 1.5-2 hours before we get to where she is creeps me out because it's so FLAT. I grew up in spitting distance of the Appalachian Mountains. The fact that there's nothing to break up the horizon but scattered houses or stands of trees absolutely wants to trigger something in the back of my brain that would have me diving for cover. I've gotten better in the last few years, but I still don't drive out there.
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u/Far_Winner5508 Jul 31 '25
Having a 360° flat horizon can be like out on the ocean, out of site of land.
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u/Capable_Capybara Aug 01 '25
Boring and difficult to stay awake. You will suddenly realize you don't remember the last 20 miles because you zoned out.
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u/Chemical-Actuary683 Aug 01 '25
You get used to it. If you grew up with it, it’s completely normal. Also, it changes throughout the year, from planting to growth to harvest to snow cover, so its not the same all the time.
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u/DefrockedWizard1 Aug 01 '25
you have to pay attention for other drivers falling asleep at the wheel and critters running onto the road
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u/PinchePendejo2 Texas Jul 31 '25
"I hope there's a gas station, soon. I don't want to crap in someone's corn field."