Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm in Iowa, the State Park in the Los Hills. it's like a really nice little forest in some ponds with fish. I was just talking to a ranger guy and he said there lots of fish in there and the way to get

him is from a kayak because you got to get away from the duck weed, just like a scum on top of the water.

It looks like a place where there'd be water moccasins in the grass. It's getting more humid and the

crickets sound different here. The river's like five miles away and there's a big power plant over there.

I can see train tracks, a bridge, freeway, Interstate 29 connecting Omaha to Kansas City.

Yesterday, south of Omaha, I was trying to find the river because it's harder to drive along

the river now. There aren't roads that parallel the river, so I see the river crossing bridges.

It's a big river at this point, and the bridges are high up off the water,

as if tall boats could pass underneath. And maybe they do. Along the

shore there are power plants and cement factories now. You knowokestacks, industrial, the rivers become an industrial highway.

It's just a lot different now.

Out in the West, it was much more easy going and friendlier, and things are getting serious now, and in these areas that are more populated people are not wearing masks

in like inside businesses grocery stores convenience stores and motels, where there are signs outside the door placed, I guess, by law saying

you must wear a mask, people inside or not wearing masks.

Last night I slept in a little cleared out area in a cornfield

in between Omaha and Kansas City.

I tried to stay in a campground and stay campground but it was full. It was full up. You know hundreds of people there were close together. camp sites were I think they made new

campsites for the COVID lots of people really close together it looked like something

from grapes of wrath these camps at Steinbeck describes where everybody, you know, camped at night.

They were moving on the road during the day and they'd set up camp at night together and they knew each other and they started making rules.

He describes how they form little towns and have

social organization. I don't know, I could have gotten out and interviewed some of them but I just as creeped out by it.

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