Day 2: Onalaska, MN to Windom, MN
Today was fantastic! As you may remember from yesterday, our car was destined for repair. The shop Deanna found opened at 7:30am. I set my alarm for 7:30am and called immediately. Luckily, not only could they fit us in, we mentioned we were just passing through and they checked it right away.
It didn’t take long for them to come back and confirm that it was indeed the oil pressure sensor. They said they were just waiting on the part to arrive and that someone was already on the way with it. We asked if there was a place to get breakfast and one of the mechanics just gave us a lift…to a place called Nutbush. Now, my teen-age humor thought the place was hilarious for the name alone. What I didn’t realize, after posting on facebook and getting responses, was that Tina Turner is from Nutbush, TN. This was just a restaurant in Wisconsin. Settle down everyone!
We stayed there and I used their wifi to plan out the day. At first I planned the straight route. We still had 500 miles at least to get to Mt. Rushmore. Then I remembered something from my life around 1989. A little 7-minute song by Weird Al Yankovic I had once memorized called The Biggest Ball of Twine In Minnesota. I looked it up, it was out of the way. About 200 miles out of the way. Luckily Deanna wanted to go to the Mall of America, and TBBOTIM was only about 70 miles away from that. It was ON THE LIST! Since I found that, I looked up other cheesy stuff. Here is our day.
Oh! First…photos will be available on Flickr and Facebook after we get back. NOW here is our day…and prepare yourself, it was eventful.
Stop 1: Ed’s Museum Wykoff, MN
I read that Ed owned a store and never threw anything away and the pics I saw (all the info on all the stops I mostly got from roadsideamerica.com) it was all 1940s and 50s stuff.
We drove all the way there…tiny little town off the main way. AND…it was CLOSED!
There was enough of a space in the covered window to at least get a little picture. Deanna and I decided to at least go get some water from the store and check out a little gift shop that was selling fudge. Two ladies were eating lunch in the grocery store and said hi. Deanna started chatting and it turned out one of the ladies was taking a lunch break from cleaning the museum. It was closed for cleaning, but she said if we didn’t mind a little dirt she would give us the tour after he lunch. SCORE!
While we waited we headed right next door to the gift shop. It had an antique bank counter. Two ladies in this place too. We got to talking with them and the building had an interesting story. The first building built in Wykoff was the bank. It burnt down long ago and they rebuilt it out of brick. Not much later on a fire destroyed every building on the street EXCEPT the brick bank. They had an exposed section of wall that showed the brick and the charring at the top. You could also see a section that was repaired after bank robbers blew up the wall to steal the vault.
Finally we got into Ed’s. This guy didn’t just save all the stuff in his store. He saved everything. Period. He lived in that building above his store and his wife had a stroke fairly early. So, he was alone except for his cats. He saved stuff with the thought of preserving history at least. He wasn’t just a packrat. I think he had every Life magazine from 1932 to 1974 or something like that. All sorts of other stuff including a sealed cardboard box with a dead cat in it. See pics for more details.
Stop 2: (Accidental) Somewhere before Mall of America
While I was looking at stuff online I noticed that somewhere there was a water tower and the top part was shaped like a giant corn cob. Well, when we stopped at Chipotle the corn water tower was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET!
Stop 3: Mall of America, Bloomington, MN
You know…that big mall. It has a Nickelodian Theme Park on the inside so Deanna and I thought we’d at least go on a ride or two. The Spongebob coaster looked the best so we did that. It was fun, but made Deanna feel a little sick. I went on some other coaster by myself where the car spins while it travels along the track. Tea-cup meets coaster in Disney terms. I felt gross after that. We only had three ride points after that and gave them to some lady so her little girl could go on a little kid ride and it made her day.
We walked around the ground level on full lap, got coffee, and headed out on our way.
Stop 4: World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Darwin, MN
a.k.a. TBBOTIM!
I can’t believe we actually went to the Ball of Twine. But we did. Right as we pulled up there were about 5 teen-aged girls screaming and giggling and getting their pictures taken. Another similar bus pulled up while we were looking at it. I think the most exciting thing about the ball is just being able to say I’ve been there.
Stop 5: Huge Corn #2, Olivia, MN
It was weird that we saw that corn water tower earlier because it was on the same web page as the big corn on a pagoda that I had PLANNED on seeing. They were both on the same web page when I read about them.
The sun was setting during the drive to the corn. Man, it was a beautiful one. Right about the time the sun disappeared the road started to head south instead of west and that was when I noticed that the full moon was rising in the east. Big and orange. Perfect.
The corn was a big corn thing…and it was close to a Subway and I was hungry.
Stop 6: Windom, MN
Nothing but an end of the day attempt to cut 80 miles of our travel tomorrow. We found we had the choice between a $75 dollar hotel or a shitty $40 one. We chose the later…but at least it has wifi.
As we were entering our final two weeks of the cruise there were two things we wanted to do. One of these things was a helicopter ride. Being in Hawaii as long as we had gave us opportunities to ask around.
