Exploring the upper midwest

In the early hours we left South Dakota and began our trek towards home. This was the view that we had for the entire day as we crossed three states: South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin...corn, corn, and more corn.

As lunchtime neared we began to search for a picnic spot for our lunch. As luck would have it, we pulled off to get gas and Ann asked the man at the station if there was anything tourist like in the area. He said, "Yeah, the giant. Go around the corner down by the Dairy Queen". We followed his advice and Randi was greeted by three local farmers who were happy to see us. They were standing outside a small hut in the shadow of a large giant.

The Jolly Green Giant stands tall alongside Ann in Blue Earth, Minnesota. Our luck continued when the woman in the small gift shop told us, "If you like this, you gotta stop in Austin to see the SPAM Museum". She then put a red X on a spot in NY on a  map of the US to mark that we had come to visit her shop. 

One hour later we arrived in Austin, home of Hormel and all it's meat products. The gatekeeper at the museum told us it was, "Free to park and free to go in the museum!". 

Our tour guide, Norm, was unbelievable friendly and offered to take our picture with Spammy. You can tell we are excited to begin our tour. We saw a movie about the history of SPAM and toured a museum that was decorated in bright yellow and blue; was interactive and filled with activities, SPAM memorabilia, videos, and facts about SPAM,

We took the SPAM exam which was like a game show where you got to push buttons to guess trivia about SPAM. We could have spent hours here but knew that we needed to push onward. We did stop at the gift shop and got a free can of hickory smoked SPAM with the purchase of a t-shirt. We even got to taste this mystery meat in a can. It was actually tasty!

As we crossed into Wisconsin we were fully engrossed in our book on CD, "A Thousand Splendid Suns" which caused Randi to drive on the wrong side of one of the thousand splendid construction cones we have encountered on our entire trip thanks to the American Recovery Act and stimulus money. We avoided any danger as Ann's loud yell helped Randi discover her slight driving error.

As we traveled through Wisconsin we crossed the Mississippi River and saw a real steamboat chugging along toward the bridge.

We reached the beautiful outskirts of Madison and found a great restaurant to have dinner. We tried real Wisconsin Mac N Cheese and had pretzel rolls with dinner. The waitress was super friendly and told us all the hot spots to see tomorrow in downtown Madison.