May 29,2014 into Minnesota

 Thursday May 29

This morning was sunny and 56 degrees.  Good night’s rest.

We head north out of LaCrosse, through Onalaska, a pretty area along the river.

 We  stop at Lock & Dam #6 to watch the proceedings as two sets of barges come through the locks.  The locks are not long enough for the whole group, so they disconnect them and put them through in two batches.  Interesting watching them maneuver.

 A man on the front of the barges gives a running commentary of the distance to the side, and distance from the lock gates, communicating with a few other workers and the pilot of the tow  (tug) boat.  Slow and steady seems to be the work rate and the lock operator rides a bright yellow bike from the upper gates to the lower ones.

Trempeleau National Wildlife Refuge is next and we a loop tour and hike a short trail.  Lots of birds including geese, ducks and a couple of wild turkeys. – I actually heard them “gobble”.  Also chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels and the sound of frogs. 

We stop by something written up as “Rock in the House”, and that is what it is – a several ton boulder fell from the bluff behind this house and apparently the people left it where it fell, closing off that part of the house. Hmmmm…

Next stop is the Prairie Moon Sculpture Garden and Museum.  This is  the work of one man, Herman Rusch, who was born in 1885.  He purchased this property, which used to be a dance hall, in 1958 and started out adding a stone planter.  Then, he says, that looked lonely, so he added another and then “inspiration” took over.  He says it was something to keep him busy in old age and he lived to 100 .

There was a woman volunteer there watering flowers and we talked with her for a while.  She offered to open the “museum” for us but warned that it hadn’t been cleaned yet this year.  It featured an assortment of stuffed animals, tools, desks, old fire fighting equipment (including a fire engine) and other odds ‘n’ ends, plus a room full of photographs, letters and articles about the place.

About 10:45 we cross into Minnesota at Winona  which has an impressive courthouse. 

We find the Minnesota Marine Art Museum a little ways outside town, along the river.  A very impressive museum for being pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The first exhibit was Japanese woodblock art, most by Utagana Hiroshige (1797-1858) very impressive and beautiful.  The next exhibit, of 5 total, was European art and included VanGogh, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, Gaugin, Cezanne, Matisse, and more!  Amazing!!  No photography allowed, of course.

Much of the other art was marine art – ships, beaches, seascapes – by William Bradford and some American artists. Bradford  made several trips to the artic so many of the pictures reflect this.   The last exhibit was from the book ICHTHYO: The Architecture of Fish.  From the Smithsonian, this exhibit featured  xrays of various types of fish.  

We head west through farmland and a large windmill farm to the town of Austin, home of Hormel Foods and the Spam Museum.  From VanGogh to Spam!

The museum is bright and done with a sense of humor.  Hormel foods introduced Spam in 1937 and produced over 100 million pounds for troops and allies between 1941 and 1945.  They show different advertising through the years and they now have 10 different varieties of Spam, including Turkey.  By 1994 they had produced 5 billion cans!  It is very popular in Hawaii, which consumes 7 million cans annually.

The main ingredient, of course, is pork and in the year 2000, they processed 7.8 million hogs, each weighing approximately 260 lbs.  That’s a lot of SPAM!  Hormel owns a long list of other familiar food companies, with Skippy Peanut Butter being their latest acquisition.

Cheryl and Eleanor, the welcome folks, shared suggestions for other things to do in Minnesota, mostly in the Duluth area and north.

We return northeast, and stop in Rochester for the night.  This is the 3^rd largest city in Minnesota, over 100,000, and home to world famous Mayo Clinic.