It’s the peak of summer- when the cicada song fades to katydids, then gently quiets to crickets.
I’m sitting on my back porch on a beautifully glorious morning, basking in the breeze that broke yesterday’s brutal heat.
And there’s one big question on my mind…
Where are we going to camp this year?
We take the kids camping at least once a year; we always have. I don’t even love tent camping but I do it anyway because I think it’s good for us. It’s good for the soul to be up close and personal with nature. It’s uncomfortable, inconvenient, dirty, buggy, a crick in the neck and a pain in the ass. But, for us at least, that break from the barrage is worth it.
When we camp, it gives us the time to canoe lazy rivers, wade, swim, hike, bike, fish, rock-hunt, and nature watch. After wearing ourselves out, the campfire becomes a memorable reward. Then, make some morning campfire coffee and do it all over again.
Our primary camp destinations are usually in Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri, and lastly (truly lastly), Iowa.
So why is Iowa last on our list even though it would be easiest to camp here?
Well… First there aren’t very many places to camp in Iowa. But more importantly, when you do find a cool place to camp, the water is usually off-limits due to e.coli. We don’t really want to canoe, swim, wade, fish and rock-hunt in poop water. Do you?
Iowa, the Poop State
Unfortunately, the poop around here has gotten completely out of control. A famous comedian commented it smelled so bad in Iowa that Iowans can’t even smell it anymore- We are too used to the bog of eternal stench. Gah! Iowans should be mortified.
When I was a kid, Iowa air would only stink when you drove out into the countryside at a very specific time of year, usually spanning a week or two. Not when you walked out your front door in town. Not when you were standing on the town square. And certainly not when you were strolling through the pedmall. What happened?
Pigs. Lots of pigs happened. CAFOs have ballooned so much so that pigs outnumber humans 8-1. Stinky air aside, their poop taints the water here, everywhere.
This year, due to an injury, we are staying in Iowa for our camp trip. But it sucks to camp here, because most of the campgrounds have e.coli warnings loud and clear- NOT SAFE TO SWIM.
I used to love going to Backbone State Park but every time I check, there is a no-swim warning due to e.coli. And so it goes all across our entire state. So there’s not really anywhere I want to camp…
I remember one campground from my childhood where the water was always pretty scuzzy and even as a kid I wondered about its safety. Turns out I was right to wonder. The water was so bad that 16 million dollars was spent to clean up and ‘revamp’ the lake. As a new parent with young children, I was super psyched about this… maybe more parks would be re-vamped and maybe we’d finally have some campgrounds where we could let our kids swim at the ‘beach’, right? WRONG. That lake hasn’t had a single summer where the waters were fit to swim. They were still infested with e.coli. What a waste of 16 million dollars.
Then, recently I read Iowa only has 15 stretches out of 70,000 miles of streamland that are suitable for recreational use.1 And as abysmal as that is, it gets worse.
Iowa, the Zero Campground State
Just kidding- we have more than zero campgrounds but considering what other states have to offer, not by much… Last I checked our state ranked last for public land access at just .3 percent.
Additionally, Farm Bureau has lobbied to ban the state from purchasing any agricultural land in the future.
If most of Iowa is farm ground and the state can’t ever purchase any farm ground to turn it into lovely parks and campgrounds, how are we ever going to grow public land access? And if most of our state’s land is owned by big ag, how will we ever clean up our water?
I suspect we won’t. It’s as if Iowa hopes to become a zero campground state. I suppose that’s one solution to the e.coli and farm runoff issue…
Iowa, the Cancer State
I’ll never forget when a report came out (in what must have been 2021?) that cancer rates were down in almost every state in the nation except for Iowa. At the time, Iowa was named as one of only two states where cancer rates were growing instead of decreasing2. And the craziest thing about this? Iowa tried to blame… ALCOHOL. Yep, you read that right. We Iowans drink that much apparently, haha.
There was, thank God, backlash to Iowa’s response. Because c’mon. We have some of the highest pesticide usage in the nation. We have glyphosate, atrazine, and acetochlor literally falling from the sky. Thank you, crop dusters.
We also have high nitrite levels due to runoff from all the fertilizer used.
We also have increased levels of PFSAs due to again, fertilizer and sewage sludge.
And finally, we have high levels of naturally occurring radon. This can contaminate soil, water, and air and it seems practically inescapable.
But here’s the thing… radon has been around for hundreds of years. So has alcohol abuse. But so far as I know, big ag hasn’t.
Our water is filthy and it might be part of the rise in cancer here.
Iowa, What do we do?
I don’t have the answers. But I find myself sitting here thinking of Erin Brockovich and all those people who lived in areas were giant corporations had unintentionally given countless residents cancer through environmental pollution. And I think back to watching that movie and screaming at the people who knew the water was poisoning them, “LEAVE PEOPLE! JUST LEAVE! YOU HAVE NO GOOD REASON TO STAY THERE”.
And yet, here I stay. I find it so much harder to leave now that I stand in similar shoes. It’s an incredible reminder to myself not to judge the actions of others.
But I have begun to question more and more why we stay here. And I’d bet for every single time I question the reason to stay, at least a handful of others leave. Because my only answer left is family. If I didn’t have family here, why stay? I wouldn’t and that isn’t good for Iowa.
Speaking of family, they want us to come swim at their pond every weekend. They want our kids to come and swim and frolic. But guess what surrounds their pond? Hundreds of acres of farm ground. I have tried to ever-so-gently bring up the water quality of that pond, and you’d think I personally sprayed their face with glyphosate the reaction was so harsh. They are too terrified to even talk about it and the last thing they want is for me to question if the kids maybe shouldn’t be swimming in that pond… It’s offensive, but again. They’re just afraid of the question.
It is depressing and it may sound like I hate Iowa, but I don’t. I love it here. I am just saddened that every time we want to do something outdoorsy, we feel we should do it in a different state.
And you know what’s crazy? I’d argue some of the biggest nature lovers out there are farmers.
To you farmers who are trapped… I am sorry.
HouseRat Zero
- https://web.archive.org/web/20260210051655/https:/cjones.iihr.uiowa.edu/blog/2022/10/mamas-dont-let-your-babies-grow-be-farmers ↩︎
- https://www.iowapublicradio.org/health/2026-03-13/annual-report-finds-iowa-cancer-rates-remain-some-of-the-highest-in-the-nation ↩︎
Just to note, I am lazy today and I did not want to provide all the footnotes and articles I’ve read in the past. It makes me sad. If you’re curious, there are more than plenty of articles and studies available as reference… just look.