Great Iowa Tractor Ride

US Road Trip Photos - Impressions From the Highway in States Less Traveled

If You Go To Iowa

Stop in Iowa City, where the University of Iowa, named by the Princeton Review as a 2006 top ten party school, revs up the little town's nightlife. Detour off 1-80 to see some covered bridges near Des Moines and eat some down home cookin' in Winterset; head south toward Kalona from Iowa City to check out Amish farmers clip clopping along the road in Amish buggies pulled by gorgeous retired racehorses.

And, with luck, you may see something astonishing and very American, like the Great Eastern Iowa Tractor Ride (photo above), a parade of 450 tractors in which we unsuspectingly but delightedly got entangled near the National Historic Landmark community of Amana during our recent drive across the Hawkeye state. You just never know what a road trip in these United States might turn up.