Driving cross-country comes as a shock. It always makes me realize what an odd perspective we have these days (and by "we" I mean urban, self-consumed, liberal newsaper-reading techies like myself). THe world is always too big or too small--but warped either way. When you're world exists between 14th and Houston, or when the geopolitical landscape makes it seem like you live in a sphere and not a country, you forget how much land there is out there. And not just that, so so so much of it is rural--big swaths of almost pure plains, hills, and forests cut by miles and miles of highway. Or the weird suburban no-man's lands; the same, anonymous strip malls over and over again. Its kind of dissappointing. I was hoping there would be some personallity out here. But no, not really. Nothing distinctive about these middle states, except the particular, gradual change from complete flatness to slow rolling hills--Oh look, a big hill!--then back to flat.
You kind of forget about these parts. That big, empty frontier was divided, sold, and cleared in the land rush sometime in the 1800s, right? Is this kitsch? They just sell nostalgic postcards of that stuff at rest stops, now, It doesn't really exist. You cant find a landscape nowadays without the golden arches visible somewhere in it.