Minnesota

After waking up in a parking lot around 5am, Linds and I went to a McDonalds to have breakfast and figure out what to do next. I must say that the McDonalds was a great introduction to Minnesota: the accent and the demeanor of the people. There must be in lithium in the water because even at the crack of dawn everyone was so kind and courteous. We had breakfast, wrote out our postcards, and drove around Austin looking for the post office to kill three hours before the Spam Museum opened. Oddly enough, by the time 10am rolled around, we were not the first people to walk through the museum doors. The ode to Spam was more than I initially expected and it gave an extensive history of the Hormel family’s involvement in the war effort during WWI and WWII. It was 30 minutes well spent. As we drove away from Austin towards the twin cities we made the mistake of keeping the windows down while we drove past the Hormel factory where Spam is created. Imagine what pureed pork shoulder would smell like on a 90 degree day and that’s what came wafting into the car. Linds almost got sick an thinking and even thinking about it now makes me a little ill.

We then headed north towards the Mall of America and arrived shortly after noon. The mall was so much more than I expected and I was thoroughly amazed to find out that in addition to having a Nordstrom, they have a water park (and a hotel, and an amusement park, and Aldo was having a clearance sale). After getting lattes at our new favorite coffee shop Carribou Coffee, we proceed to spend the day shopping without the burden of sales tax. With hunger getting the best of us, we left the mall and headed out towards Darwin, Minnesota the home of the largest ball of twine rolled by one man. We originally planned to go into Minneapolis, but the Sculpture Garden and Walker Art Center are both closed on Mondays. Much to our dismay, we decided to forgo the trip in to the cities and head straight to Darwin.

As we were about to leave the city limits, I sped right by a local police officer. Obviously speeding (68 in a 55 so I would later find out) the officer turned around and pulled us over. Lindsay pulled out the road map and I put on my most confused face. The young, male officer approached the vehicle and asked me why I thought he pulled us over. I said (in a high and anxiety-filled voice) that I was probably going too fast, but was extremely stressed because we were lost (this was a lie, we knew exactly where we were going). He asked where we were headed to and Lindsay, in a moment of brilliance, started staring at the map but said nothing. Then she puts her finger down and exclaims “Marshalll!” Then I started stammering about how I thought we were on 23 but we haven’t seen a sign in ages, etc. The nice police officer, looking and sounding exactly like the officers in Fargo, proceeded to give us the sweetest directions. At the end he did say, “I’m not going to give you a ticket, in case you hadn’t figured that out already.” He did take my license, and was going to give us a written warning, but all his stuff was in the back seat of his car and he didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting it. Hats off to that very nice officer. It just goes to show you, the damsel in distress still works.

The rest of the ride along Route 12 was an education in the meaning of “small town.” We only stopped once and that was when we arrived at Darwin (population:226). We drove down the main street to the Ball of Twine Museum only to discover a HUGE ball of twine and most of the inhabitants of Darwin congregating around it. As the town’s only claim to fame, it seems to be a pretty big deal. We were invited inside the “museum” (which was actually someone’s home) for some lemonade and to chat with the locals. We declined the lemonade but did stay to chat a bit. As nice as they were, we had no intention of staying in Darwin more than 20 minutes, so we made a polite but quick getaway before we became “one of them.” It was a very, very different experience.