Sunday Drive

I've been doing a lot of driving for work lately. I mean A LOT. Hitting both Plainview and Fairmont in the last two days means I've covered east to west most of southern Minnesota.

Many of these small towns I'm traveling to are only accessible by back roads--with names like Old Highway 60, or Vintage Highway 5. There are fields on either side--the five-foot sweet corn or the perfectly straight rows of beans.

I prefer these back roads to interstate driving. Occasionally, I'll pull over, fish out my camera and snap a few photos. But really, the entire trip is one long photoshoot in my mind. Every single peeling, faded red barn and double silo against the backdrop of corn fields, bright blue sky--with a perfect, wispy white clouds--it's cliche. Each one could be a painting. And each one is beautiful.

 My friends who have spent their entire lives in Minneapolis, or a suburb like Edina, don't quite understand that gravel roads are real things. And that you might be late because you're very likely to be stuck behind a tractor for a few miles.

After my work in Fairmont was done, I figured that since I was already on that side of the state, I would drop in and visit my grandpa and aunt in Butterfield. It was a surprise visit, but they were home--grandpa napping in his chair in the corner, Kay had just finished washing the windows. She offered me sparking water and cookies. Everything was right in the world.

I stayed for an hour and a half, caught up on the Butterfield City Council ongoing drama, and then made the trip back home.

Southern Minnesota is hardly a glamorous place to live, and I often complain about wanting to move somewhere warm (mostly in January and February), but on evenings when I'm driving, watching the sun dip behind a valley of farmland, I can't imagine a more beautiful place on earth.