Headed for Minneapolis

This morning when we'd packed up the motorhome and made sure that we'd not forgotten to unplug stuff, we headed south on state route 81 for a short distance, then jumped on Interstate 90 east. Our intention was to head toward Minneapolis but we wanted to stick with secondary roads if we could. The first opportunity I found on the map was Highway 60 which, more or less, headed on a diagonal toward the twin cities area from the Interstate, though it became another highway before you had reached the halfway point. We hadn't made any specific plans to visit anything along the way. We just wanted to put some miles on the truck, plug in a good thriller on the CD player, and watch the fields full of feed corn and soy beans blow by.

For the past couple of days we've been listening to a Robert Crais mystery, though I wish I had tossed it out the window on the second disk. Robert is a native of my home county, Los Angeles, and I have read his works before. But after several days of listening to an absolutely exquisite thriller by my favorite author of such works, Hammond Innes, Robert Crais' effort was rather dismal by comparison. Thankfully, today's book is by Jack Higgins, another long-time favorite of mine and he is so far doing an admirable job. By the way, I gave the Robert Crais book to the camp host of our municipal camp tonight and won't have to look at it any more. Sorry Robert.

Anyway, we're headed northeast on Hwy 60 today, just minding our own business, when about mid-day we go sailing past a wide spot in the highway called Mountain Lake. Just out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a large, white building with the words, "Telephone Museum" emblazoned on the side. My dear father worked for three decades for the Western Electric Company, a supplier of much equipment to the various telephone companies.

"Did you see that?" I said to Concetta.

"What?"

"The telephone museum sign."

"No," she said.

"Well, we haven't had our cultural stop for the day, you know."

"Go ahead and go back," she said, and braced herself for a radical U-turn.

It turns out the Mountain Lake folks hold an open house at their Heritage Village ONCE A YEAR and we just happened to stumble upon it on just the right day. These folks have pulled old historic buildings from around the area into one location encompassing about an acre or two in size and outfitted the buildings with appropriate furnishings. The restored structures range from a railroad station to a school house, from a general store to a blacksmith shop. In fact, just about every type of business you can think of is represented. On their one day a year open house they all dress up in costume, staff all the buildings, and serve up homemade food enough to satisfy everyone's tastes, both residents and visitors. We were just thrilled.

Concetta and I wandered throughout the grounds for about an hour taking in as much as we could absorb. All the docents were wonderfully friendly and outgoing and made our visit as enjoyable as we could hope for. We especially liked the ladies in the farmhouse who showed us their waffle makers designed to sit atop a wood-burning stove (photo above).

In the train station we looked up when a terrible racket began to emanate from a nearby room. I stuck my head in the door and caught the pictured conductor "playing" a terribly out-of-tune player piano, though the state of the tuning didn't appear to bother the old gent at all. I think he was hopeful that I'd come in and listen to he music, but I nevertheless beat a hasty retreat.

The Mountain Lake folks had a marvelously beautiful day for their festivities. We certainly thank them for their enthusiastic efforts and for their willingness, one and all, to make us feel welcome though they'd never laid eyes on us before.

The Mountain Lake Heritage festival was actually only one of two exciting adventures we had today. The second was -- are you ready for this -- washing the motor home. Lord, I never, ever tried to wash something so big. If you've been reading this blog you know that we have systematically been collecting six states worth of bugs, road grime, and campfire smoke on the ol' Tioga. It looked like a rolling science experiment.

But the general filthy condition of the coach wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that we drove it into one of those do-it-yourself car washes where you feed your quarters into the slot and then rush like hell to finish before your time runs out. Before I finished, I had fed in about a week's allowance worth of quarters and large bills and worked like the sorcerer's apprentice trying to scrub that massive thing with a brush, then rinse it off completely before the bell announced my time was up.

Meanwhile, the soapy brush was busily spewing out what seemed like acres of sudsy foam faster than I could actually deal with it. Even weirder, the foam came out in a wild kaleidoscope of colors that would have sent some of my former roommates from the sixties into never, never land. I had to brush furiously on every part of the coach I could reach or, if I had stood in one spot, the suds would have buried me. It reminded me of one of those old sitcoms, probably "I love Lucy," where the inexperienced housewife puts too much soap in the washing machine and it proceeds to fill the room with suds.

Once the coach was all covered with the kaleidoscope of suds, I then had to try and get off all that soap while I still had time on the machine. The result was a veritable blur of washing, rinsing, re-washing places I'd missed, and re-rinsing. Of course the coach is so big, thirty feet, that I couldn't reach the rear at all. The hoses were too short. In the end, the rig looks pretty good and I got most of the worst of the bug splatters off the front. I think the next time I need the darn thing washed I'm going to find one of those high school charity car washes and turn it over to the youngsters. They need the money.

We actually had one more adventure today before the sun dipped below the horizon: we tried to barbecue some vegetables and a couple of steaks. Now normally this would not have been a big deal. Most campgrounds have a barbecue pit or steel cage to make your barbecuing experience a pleasurable one. But here in Madelia, in the municipal park camp, they provide you with a large steal wheel, probably from some long defunct 18-wheeler,and call it good. I studied the wheel, at least I did after I stole one from a nearby empty camp since our camp had no such wheel. I could see where I could easily fill the cavity of the wheel with charcoal and make myself a nice little fire. But since there was no actual grilling surface to go over the wheel, I could not see how the steaks would be cooked. Hmmm.

Finally I decided that I'd just take some of the firewood that we've been carrying since Carson City and build myself a little square, log cabin style, inside the cavernous wheel. Into the square I'd dump my charcoal. And over the square I could put the little 12" diameter screen that we'd found in a grocery store somewhere in South Dakota. It all seemed very logical and easy.

Anyway, that's what I did. Only problem was that the wood was so dry that it instantly caught fire, even better than the charcoal. Now I had this roaring fire that could have cooked a whole buffalo and still nothing to cook on.

So, for my next trick I scrounged around the camp area for large rocks or rock-like items. I finally managed to collect an igneous rock about the size of a football and what could only be described as a concrete stepping stone about ten inches in diameter. Placing these things on either side of my fire (it had begun to die down a bit once I removed some of the wood -- at great danger to myself I might add), I propped two slender pieces of wood between the igneous rock and the stepping stone in a sort of A-frame configuration and then rested the 12" diameter screen on top of the sticks and then Concetta's foil-wrapped potatoes, onions, and carrots on the screen. At last, success.

Or that's what I thought. I sat down to have our vodka and cranberry cocktail and chat a moment with the park host who had motored by on her golf cart. Occasionally I'd glance over to check the progress of the food. Suddenly, I caught sight of the tin foil drop straight down into the fire. I leaped up and ran over and saw immediately that the two sticks that I had used to prop up the whole cooking arrangement had burned right through.

Fortunately I was able to rescue the packet with loss of only one potato wedge. In disgust I abandoned the whole thing and dragged out the camp stove. Note to self: next time bring a grill topper for those rare times when no such appliance is provided. Might take a bit of wire-brushing after each use before it could be stowed, but it sure would make life a lot simpler.