From Covered Bridges to Corn Palaces

You know I said that we were in the prairies yesterday as it was starting to get a 'little bit' flatter?  That was nothing compared to the way it looked by mid morning as we set out from Des Moines. It's flatter than a dead pan comedian -- So flat in fact, that people from around here would argue quite plausibly, that we are in fact living on a flat earth. Most of today we spent driving, surrounded by grass lands and bails of hay and well you get the idea.
 
On our way through to Mitchell, South Dakota, we visited the Bridges of Madison County (from the book/movie of the same title). They were 'covered bridges', which means that the expensive flooring wood is protected by the cheaper sheltering wood above. The bridges are over a hundred years old and none of them are used anymore. We discovered a fair amount of graffiti on the sheltering wood, mostly telling tales of undying love, some of which were etched into the older portions of the bridges.
 
Well that's enough of our travel update for this entry, as we promised to give you more details about our so called 'iPurchase' which was a birthday present of an iPhone for Colin. In case you have been living under a rock for the past six months, the 'Apple iPhone' is an all singing all dancing mobile phone that does everything short of doing your laundry. Colin, much to the patient forbearance of Melissa, has been obsessing about having one, even if there was a chance that it wouldn't work (which it didn't initially). That's the problem with being a tourist: No American address means no iPhone contract from AT&T.
 
I did eventually get it to work by using a prepaid card from the now defunct cingular and doing something that the hackers refer to as 'break out of jail' (but I don't have a criminal record?).
 
The only problem is that with the two of us so far entrenched in the US outback; AT&T doesn't even work out here! So to date, I haven't actually used the phone portion of this fabulous gift yet. Owh, btw, I'm not sure how this works, but I have a Des Moines number...