August 7, 2006: Wisconsin & Minnesota

Signs of the Midwest:

• Cornfields and hay bales

• Barns and silos and water towers

• Tractor supply companies and tractor museums

• In Wisconsin, giant signs reading CHEESE above the rolling farmland

• In Minnesota, people who talk like Garrison Keillor

• Long, flat, straight roads

Another four-state day. We started our drive at noon near the Illinois border, where we filled our tank at $3.07 a gallon, spent the day crossing Wisconsin and Minnesota, and ended in South Dakota. Our lunch stop was in the Wisconsin Dells, “The Waterpark Capital of the World™,” which is relentlessly advertised as one approaches the area. It’s the Cheese State’s relatively low-key answer to Branson, Missouri, minus the countrified Dollywood ambiance.

The theme here is outdoorsy, so besides outdoor or indoor waterslides at every hotel, the place offers golf, skiing, horseback riding, jet boat tours, and dozens of other activities. There’s Timber Falls Adventure Park, Timbavati Wildlife Park, Tommy Bartlett’s Ski-Sky-Stage Show, Rick Wilcox Magic Theater, Circus World Museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Noah’s Ark (“America’s Largest Waterpark”), and a plethora of cheesy tourist attractions. We didn’t stay long.

Just before we crossed the Mississippi River at the town of La Crosse, we came upon more oddly shaped rocks or hoodoos, including one that Debbie thought looked like a castle. When we pulled off the road, a sign told us that it was called, no surprise, “Castle Rock." We didn't stop in La Cross, but if we had, we could have seen the "world’s largest six-pack," six massive tanks of La Cross Lager with a capacity of 688,200 gallons, enough beer to fill 7,340,796 normal-sized cans.

In the town of Austin, Minnesota, corporate headquarters for Hormel, we stopped for a very brief look at the Spam Museum, devoted to the company’s number one product. It’s everyone’s least favorite canned “luncheon meat,” and of course it’s not very popular in your inbox either. It’s also the subject of one of the dumbest and most repetitive songs ever sung, and now it’s even in the title of Eric Idle’s hit Broadway musical Spamalot, a reworking of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

All this talk of corn and cheese and beer and spam prompts me to address the subject of our diet on the road. When we dine with family or friends or at nice restaurants, we can get what we like and eat healthfully. But in transit on the interstate, there is a real paucity of choice and of nutritional value. We have to please the boys, whose palates are decidedly underdeveloped, and we can’t stray too far from the highway, so we’re limited to the comforting blandness and homogeneity of places like Wendy’s and Denny’s.

To give them credit, even Debbie, who doesn’t eat meat, can find things to eat there, like baked potatoes, salad bars, veggie burgers, and fish. (I call Debbie a lacto-ovo-pesca-vegetarian, since she consumes milk, eggs, and seafood. Me, I’m on a see food diet – if I see food, I eat it.) But our boys, picky eaters both, will only eat a few things. Danny’s diet seems to consist of little other than pancakes, pizza, macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, French fries, milkshakes, and ice cream. Tommy’s a bit more adventuresome, but most vegetables are still a hard sell. Debbie and I are really looking forward to the end of this phase.

Just before we left Minnesota, we had the opportunity to drive south for about ten miles and dip into Iowa, adding another state to our itinerary. But the late hour and a pounding headache persuaded me to nix that plan. I’m reminded of the temptation I had to drive 60 miles north of Boston to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, just to cross the bridge into Maine, add two more states to the roster, and lay claim to having been in all four corners of the country. But I couldn’t bring myself to waste half a day and drag the family along to a place they had no interest in going to.

Today our boys worked on making up games, one called "Ring of Power" and another called "Mothership." Tommy is really interested in creating computer games. Dedicated Danny finished reading the complete Harry Potter series – all six books – for the second time (he’s read two of the novels on this trip). We called a halt for the night at the Ramada Inn in the city of Sioux Falls, not far inside the South Dakota border. Gas was $3.13 a gallon. We hope for once to get an early start in the morning so that we can get to the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore by tomorrow afternoon.