EnviroWonk writer Samantha Hulkower road-tripped from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles last week.

For those of you anxiously anticipating our cross country postings, pardon the delay -- we underestimated how much time we'd have. But never fear, we took copious notes and are ready to fill you in.

If you haven't had the opportunity to drive on I-70 through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, we can describe it for you in 2 words: corn fields. As we haven't been through that area before, we don't know if this has been inspired by the corn ethanol craze, or has always been there, but damn, America grows a lot of corn. We only noticed on biodiesel fueling station, in Missouri, which is odd considering we were traveling through one of the densest regions of biofuel gas stations in the country.

Residents of Summit County in western Colorado have made up for their state's lack of corn resources by partnering with local eateries to send their cooking oil to a biodiesel refinery, so that local businesses can use it in their trucks.

While the rest of the nation is looking for ways to grow, rather than drill, their way out of high gas prices, the presidential candidates aren't necessarily on the same page. McCain doesn't even mention the prefix "bio" in his description of his Lexington Project. Obama does spend time discussing not only "the next generation of biofuels " which we hope means not from corn, but also developing the infrastructure to get it into people's cars, always an important concept.