We covered a bunch of the same areas you did, a little over a week ago. Put 2800mi on the FLH going through N IN, OH, W PA & NY. From there we went through Niagara Falls up the QEW to Toronto, then 400 up to Barrie on up around the N shore of Huron coming back in to the US @ Sault St Marie. From there we zig zagged the U.P. then across the Mackinac Bridge ( a thrill in itself on a scooter) followed the Lake Mich coast down to 131 & then a lot of the same areas you saw. From there we backtracked home on 30 & 24.

A couple weeks before that we did ~2500mi through S ILL to W KY to SE MO to a LOT of zig zagging in AR & MO before heading back home through MO to Hannibal to Quincy then Rt 24 home.

Several weeks ago we toured most of IA from the Quad cities to Mason City & Algona S, down to 30 then on down to Keokuk.

Overall impressions;

When in the desolate areas of Canada & the U,P., get gas when gas is available. Even @ 45mpg, a 5 gal tank won't last forever & 17.4ltr = 4.6gal. That leaves <20mi of fuel remaining when towns w/ gas aren't always that close up there! There's a fairly easy to figure out story in there somewhere..

Best corn we saw (for the stage of the season) was in NW ILL. It all looked like N IA & S MN has the last couple of years.

Worst corn was right where you saw it, S MI, N IN & N OH. Like you said, there's even irrigated seed corn up in MN w/ no ears on it. Saw patches of total burn out all the way from GR on south.

N & E IA looked nothing like they did @ the same stages the last couple of years. Lots of drowned out places from the early wet & a lot more uneven populations & stands. You just can't mud it in the way those guys had to do it & expect a lot, no matter how good the genetics are.

I've seen S ILL look a lot worse.

One universal thing seems to stick out & I don't altogether know why. That thing seems to be narrow row counts on ears & an awfull lot of evidence of sidewall compaction when the plants were smaller. Just didn't matter how planters were set up, they all had it...