The End of The Road

Well, it's not exactly the end of The Great River Road, but it is for us.  Our memorable road trip will terminate tonight in Minneapolis, but before it does, I have plans to make three stops, all very different from one another.  But then that's the way our two weeks on The Road have been.  Tim and I have seen a wide variety of attractions, amazingly so considering that most of the river towns we've passed through have been small and rural in nature.  We've visited everything from nature centers to historic sites to wineries to factories to locks and dams.  Today would be no different.

The quilts and doily owned by the Wilder family and the first edition of Little House in the Big Woods are the museum's prizes.

First and most important on my list was the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Pepin, Wisconsin.  When I was a child, I devoured Wilder's Little House series drawn from events of her childhood and adolescence in the pioneer days of Midwest.  "Once upon a time...a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs," read the opening lines of her first book, Little House in the Big Woods.  

I wanted to see the cabin where her parents homesteaded near Pepin so when the museum docent gave me directions for the next best thing, its replica seven miles northeast of town, I persuaded Tim to take me there.

The Little House Wayside was charming.  Its two rooms with an outdoor water pump nearby were almost exactly as I'd pictured it.

The only disparity was that the woods, not surprisingly, have been replaced by fields of corn.

Villa Bellezza Winery

As a reward for Tim's patient detour to the Wayside, we added two unscheduled stops to the day's itinerary: two wine tastings on the Great River Road Wine Trail.  The trail's map lists eleven wineries along The Road in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  I'd never heard of ice wine produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine, but I had the chance to try a sip at Villa Bellezza Winery.

In the tasting room which was once a former bank, Debbie, our server, explained that the water within the grapes freezes and is pressed away, leaving more concentrated sugary grape juice for fermentation.

The result is a sweet dessert wine that is delectable and worthy of storage in the winery's vault.

Next up was the Maiden Rock Winery & Cidery.  Their specialty are the hard ciders made from apples grown in their orchards.  Their HoneyCrisp Hard is a semi-dry concoction that I found to my liking.

Stockholm Pie & General Store

Two stops on the Wine Trail were our limit.  We needed some food to soak up the alcohol's effects.

A stop at the Stockholm Pie & General Store was just the ticket.

Oh, my!  The pie!  I chose a slice of Blackberry Custard from their extensive list of fruit pies, nut pies, custard pies and seasonally available pies and it did not disappoint.  Delicious!

Back in the car and once again on The Road, we crossed the Mississippi one final time into Minnesota, our ultimate destination--Minneapolis.  But there was one more stop on my list--Red Wing, MN, where 5000 boots a day are made with pride at the Red Wing Shoe Factory.

At the turn of the 20th century, Charles Beckman, a local shoe merchant, saw a need for footwear that would hold up better for area farmers, loggers and miners.

Advertisement on display at Red Wing Shoe Museum

He closed his store and founded the Red Wing Shoe Company in 1905.  Today Red Wing shoes are shipped to 110 countries around the world.

A display behind glass shows the steps production of a shoe takes from cutting the leather pieces to stitching its trademark triple-stitch seams to the bottoming when a liquid is injected into a mold that fastens the upper to the sole.

All of those same techniques went into producing Red Wing's largest workboot ever witnessed by the civilized public, a boot that is 20 feet long, 16 feet tall and seven feet wide.  Its eyelets each weigh four pounds while its shoelace is 100 and four feet long.  Created to celebrate the company's centennial and officially recorded by Guinness World Records in 2005, this shoe is a photo opportunity worthy of any visitor.

So that's it!  I'd hoped we could follow The Road all the way to the Mississippi's source in Itasca State Park, but that's 220 miles north and a little west of Minneapolis.  Too far to fit into this trip!  Maybe next time!

Going Off The Road

Tim and I left the Great River Road temporarily for a detour to Forest City, Iowa where Winnebago RVs are manufactured.

Tim wanted to tour their factory and I had no choice but to come along.  Not that I'm complaining; it's pretty amazing to see how these homes on wheels are made.  Plus, Tim allowed me to plot our course to some interesting places along the way.

With our first stop being the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, we added another presidential library to the list of those we've already visited.

Cartoon on display at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.

I think we Americans have denigrated Hoover as the president who failed to bring the United States out of the Great Depression, but after visiting here, I have a new respect for him.

This two-room cottage is where Hoover was born.

I never knew that he was raised by his maternal aunt and uncle after his Quaker parents died.

Herbert Hoover, Age 3
Photo on display at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum

Nor did I know that after graduating from Stanford, he made a fortune as a mining engineer working for companies in Western Australia and China and later as an independent mining consultant who traveled the world until the start of World War I.

Herbert Hoover
Photo on display at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum

By 1914 with wealth more than $4 million, Hoover used his a portion of his fortune to organize an unprecedented relief effort for the hungry citizens of Belgium who were caught between the warring nations of Germany and France.  This earned him world-wide recognition as "The Great Humanitarian," notoriety that brought him to his first elected office, the presidency in 1928.  Yet, within a few short months, the global hero had become a scapegoat in his own land eventually losing his bid for re-election in 1932.

President Harry Truman with former President Herbert Hoover
Photo on display at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum

Still, when President Harry Truman invited Hoover to undertake a post-World War II global relief effort, Hoover did what he did best, rescue those ravaged by war.

Next stop, Cedar Rapids, Iowa!  There Tim accompanied me to see the loft studio of Grant Wood.

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 [Oil on beaver board], The Chicago Institute of Art,.

This was where the artist painted American Gothic in 1930, a painting that reminds me of my grandparents.  The farmer above is almost a dead ringer of my paternal grandfather.

Famous for wearing farmer's bib overalls, Wood lived here with his mother and often his sister as well while he created the paintings that soon linked his name with other Regionalist artists like Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry.

After seeing Wood's studio, who could resist visiting Cedar Rapids Museum of Art where the world's largest collection of Wood's paintings may be found?  Tim, that's who!  A little dose of art is enough for him, but he graciously allowed me 30 minutes to visit the museum while he sat in the car, checking his email.

Grant Wood, Young Corn, 1931 [Oil on masonite], Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

My favorite was Wood's bird's eye view of a corn field in his Young Corn painting.  The precision of the corn plants on the rolling hills vies with the puffy trees for your attention and almost overwhelms the farm family figures below.  After traveling halfway across Iowa with its miles and miles of corn fields, I could understand why Wood would choose corn for his subject.  Such fields are everywhere!

Grant Wood, The Mourner's Bench, 1921-1922 [Oak, carved and stained] Cedar Rapids  Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

His "Mourning Bench" especially caught my eye as an example of his sense of humor.  He carved the three woeful and crying children's heads for the bench while the rest was made with the help of his art students from McKinley Junior High School.  As a former middle school teacher myself, I could imagine the warm relationships he forged with his students.

The Historic Park Inn Hotel

Passing through Mason City, Iowa, we stopped at the Historic Park Inn Hotel, the last remaining hotel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  His commission here was to build a bank, a hotel and law office in one unified building that would anchor a downtown corner in this small county-seat community.

The result is vintage Prairie School: a long, low look with an overhanging roof and his signature windows.

Windows, however, are what's missing from the ground floor of the bank he added to the east side of the structure.  That ploy gives the bank a vault-like appearance, a "strong box," indicative of the building's purpose.  The hotel reopened its doors to the public in 2011, following a 18.5 million-dollar renovation that added en suite baths to rooms where no two are alike.

Finally, the law office on the second floor is now a quiet spot for hotel guests to read or work.

Then on to the Winnebago factory tour, the main reason for this side jaunt.  There we were tempted to buy this new Class B recreational vehicle, a miniature model of the real van.  At least, its price fit our pocketbook!

Nothing Runs Like a Deere!

Visiting Moline, Illinois on our Great River Road excursion gave Tim and I the opportunity of a lifetime.  A tour of the John Deere Harvester Works!  At least, that’s how my brother Jon who has taken over the management of our family farm in Kansas would view it.

And it was interesting to see just how those behemoth machines with their 45-foot long headers are put together.  Only I wouldn’t want to meet one on a narrow country road.  Whoa!  Wait a second!  This past wheat harvest I did encounter three of these combines in a convoy on the country road that leads to our farm.  And I was the one who had to back up to the mile line in order to let them pass.  But I digress.

When we arrived at the John Deere facility, we were told we couldn’t take any photos during the tour. I guess posting such information on my blog would reveal secrets to raiders from competitors and even to foreign companies who’d like to steal U.S. technology.  So I put away my cellphone and climbed aboard a tram ready for a guided tour through a factory that is the size of 11 football fields.  It’s also the cleanest factory I’ve ever seen and believe me!  Tim has dragged me along on six RV factory tours so I do have some experience to back up this claim.

Laser-cutting machines from Switzerland make cuts with infinitesimal accuracy.  Fifty-thousand-pound combines move smoothly from one station to the next suspended on a pulley that propels them along with ease. Welders and riveters with years of experience joined together more than 18,500 pieces.  Finally, the finished machines were dipped in several baths of the trademark green paint before a triple-jointed robotic arm gave them the final touch-up.

All John Deere combines are sold before they are built, either to an individual farmer or to a dealer; none are made on spec.  If you want a new John Deere combine, be prepared to wait six months for your order to reach the backlogged assembly line.  However, once work is begun, it takes only ten days to build one.  That’s how fast the workers here can churn them out. 

Then, for approximately $650,000, you Tim could drive a brand spanking-new combine off the assembly line, filled with more electronics on board than the first space shuttle, and take it home.   However, if you turn the key, and despite hundreds of inspections done along the line, the combine fails to start, our tour guide joked that they’d bring it around the corner and paint it red, a jab at the machines of their competitor Case.

Personally, Tim!  I think these combine seats (circa the mid-1900s) are more your style.

Just as an aside: While we waited for the tour to begin, I had texted Jon to tell him where we were and to ask him if he’d like for me to bring one home for him.  He replied, “Bring two!  One for wheat harvest and another with an 18-row header to harvest corn!”

In your dreams, Jon!  In your dreams!