VIENNA, Ill. (AP) This is the Illinois that many people never see the sparsely populated southern tip where flat farmland gives way to rollinghills, rocky outcrops, thick forests and cypress swamps.
For 96 miles we wended our way through rollinghills covered with kelly-green acacia, finally arriving at Monkey Mia, a strip of white-sand beach where bottle-nosed dolphins come every morning to beg for fish.
Our identity is in softly rolling prairies giving way to forested hills, in long stretches of horizon that make you feel like you could see almost to eternity, and in big skies stretched tight above it all.