July 5, 2006

July 5, 2006

Austin, MN is the home of Hormel Foods famous for canned Spam, canned hams, and canned Chili. Hormel has a corporate museum called the Spam Museum. There is no way I am driving past this. At the entrance, we are greeted by a personal tour guide who offers us our first taste of Spam; not bad, but not great either. It seems that a Hormel patriarch was left holding the bag for some 50,000 empty tin cans after a government contract was pulled. Hence the need for some creative food marketing with canned products. The museum is an interesting diversion for an hour. We exit thru the company store; we almost buy a can of Spam, but we decide we will wait till our refrigerator fails or I get drafted into a war.

The rest of the day we pass through southern Minnesota. It looks very much like Illinois farm country, flat and full of corn stalks. Mid afternoon we make it to the South Dakota border. At the first exit, we head north seven miles looking for Palisades State Park. I misinterpret a sign and go past it and quickly run into signs for Devils Gulch. We decide to see what it is before returning. I am glad we did. Devils Gulch is the supposed site where Jesse James eluded the posse chasing him by jumping Evel Knievel style across a narrow gorge. I am not too interested in the legend but our hike around the area shows a small river running through some pretty red rock gorges. I am amazed to find this in the middle of corn country. Reading the literature, it seems the rocks are Sioux Quartzite, almost identical in appearance and origin to the Baraboo rocks at Devils Lake, WI. We spend the night at the nearby Palisades State Park. It has the same red rock cliffs but the Split Rock River is much wider here.

Aimee has gone to bed early. I get a knock on the door. It is the next door neighbor needing help rolling up the awning. Not a problem. I jump up with my flashlight and awning rod determined to be a Good Samaritan. I figure I can help her with this easy problem. Unfortunately my three times rolling out our awning is not enough experience to fix hers. I need a few more weeks at this.