Crossing west over the Mississippi River: Iowa and Nebraska

21-26 September 2026

Our noses are pointed due west again! This time, we are on Interstate 80. Up and down the hilly and forested lands of western Pennsylvania, with canopies of maples and oaks and beech trees that have yet to turn color, stretching as far as the eye can see on both sides of the highway. Retracing our steps through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois where Interstate 80 and 90 are one and the same. Surviving the gauntlet that is the Chicago metropolitan area again. I get a small taste of the trucker's life: day after day of endless highways, quick meals at rest stops, tired nights at Love's Truck Stop.

And then - finally - the Mississippi River! And into Iowa.

The RV journey is not quite as slow as the covered wagons of old, but it is much slower than the miracle of flight. I now appreciate how amazing it is to be able to cross the country from Seattle to DC in less than 5 hours. Along our slow journey from sea to shining sea, I observe that humans are indeed the same everywhere: we all love good food and company, we dislike change, and kindness is appreciated all over. Yet we have astoundingly different mindsets and lifestyles. Crossing east, the shift seemed to happen somewhere between Fargo, ND and Minneapolis. Now crossing west, it was the Mississippi River.

The tales of American westward expansion are told and retold in poetry, prose, and the ubiquitous historical markers and memorials along the roads: the ancient Indian footpaths, the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail. I have felt a little of what the West means in the collective American imagination. Even in 2026, the Mississippi River still feels like the boundary between East and West in this country. In the East, the highways are many, the population is dense and diverse, and the mindset is urban. Something shifts on the other side of the great River. People seem simultaneously more kind and more suspicious, more generous and also more into who belongs and who does not. The land spreads out. Cornfields replace forests. Americana is celebrated. So is self-sufficiency, productivity, tradition, possibility, and the abiding belief that you own what you work hard for.

In addition to experiencing the largest truck stop in the world at Iowa 80 and having its famous meat loaf, Won was determined to try a runza in Nebraska. The story of this dish sums up the American Midwest for me. A runza, also called a krautburger or pirozhok, is essentially a hot pocket of bread stuffed with spiced ground beef and cabbage/sauerkraut. A long time ago, Catherine the Great, of German heritage herself, took the Russian imperial throne. In the 1760s, she published manifestos inviting and enticing Germans to settle the Russian lands along the Volga River valley. They could maintain their language, culture, religion, and be exempt from military service. Predictably, when the regime changed, these rights and accommodations were revoked. But by then, several generations had passed, enough time for the ethnic Germans to adapt an Eastern European pasty to their cuisine. In the 19th and 20th centuries, many of these Volga Germans fled persecution and immigrated to, of all places, Nebraska. They brought their recipes with them, and started restaurants in the American Midwest. Which is how it came to be that Won and I, of Korean and Chinese descent, found ourselves sitting at a vaguely fast food-style establishment off Interstate 80, enjoying runzas, onion rings, and crinkle cut fries.

I saw my first harvest moon in Wyoming. I mean, really saw it. I've lived through 44 autumn equinoxes. For many reasons, unimportant now, I suppose I never looked at the night sky at the right time of year. The brilliant orange orb rising in the eastern sky just as the sun set in the west seemed unreal at first. I spun around from my spot on the vast high plains with my mouth agape trying to take in the colors: purples and pinks where the sun had just disappeared over the horizon, deepening blues into black on the dome of the sky, bright vermilion in a perfect circle directly east. She rose quickly over the few clouds, big and haunting and beautiful.

When I awoke in the morning and looked for her, there she was now in the western sky. This time, silver and full. The harvest moon is meant to welcome autumn and the harvest. It seemed to me that she was welcoming me back to the west, to the mountains and the high plains. Back home.