Road Trip Report, Day Four

CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod hit the road to chart pain at the pump. Here's his Web-exclusive daily road diary.

A steady parade of politicians last year — all trying to suck up to the locals here in Iowa — kept taking a perfectly accurate and valid statement and banished it to the realm of cliché.

"It's not heaven," every last one of them would say at the airport in Des Moines, Davenport, or Cedar Rapids, "it's Iowa."

This morning, driving US Route 61 North from Davenport to Dubuque, I am reminded that just because something's obsequious, doesn't mean it's not true. It's a beautiful late August day. On both sides of the highway, we see acre after acre of cornfields. Green stalks starting their final growth spurt, topped by a silky brilliant yellow top. It's quite something.

But maybe — and this could well be a sign that I've gone around the bend with the whole price patrol deal — the most beautiful thing about Iowa this morning is that gas is 17 cents-a-gallon cheaper than the state we just came from, Illinois.

What we've found here is a lot of people from Illinois crossing the Mississippi River to get the cheaper gas. Do the math. Let's say you've got a delivery truck that holds 20 gallons. Multiply that by 17 cents. That's $3.40 saved every fill-up. Fill up once a day and that's $17 a week. Over a year that's almost $900. Would you drive an extra mile to save $900?

Iowa is also home to one of the silver linings of the spiking gas prices. Its tourism numbers are way up. People from Iowa aren't leaving and folks from a few hours away in Wisconsin or Missouri are driving to the Field of Dreams or the National Farm Toy Museum in Dyersville. Or the aquarium in Dubuque. Or the Danish Windmill in Elk Horn instead of vacation spots requiring longer, costlier drives. The Field of Dreams, for instance, is having its biggest attendance summer since the release of the movie 16 years ago.

We'll talk much more about both of these things on the CBS Evening News tonight.