Spam and Winnebago - September 10 & 11

     Kermit leaves for work at 4:30am, so our farewells had been the night before.  We were up early and took off by 7, and splurged on breakfast at a Cracker Barrel. 
     One of the true joys of RVing is the ability to find off-the-wall places around the country you may never have heard of.  Today brought us one of those opportunities.  Becky discovered in her research that the headquarters of Hormel Foods is in Austin, MN, right on our route on I90.  More importantly, it is also the site of the SPAM museum, a fascinating little bit of Americana.  It's actually a large museum, with everything you ever wanted to know about Spam and it's free!

     As you enter the building, you are greeted by a very friendly receptionist who hands you a cleverly illustrated brochure/map of the Museum (Jim is holding it in the picture).  She then asks the visitors to turn around and look up, and the photo on the left shows the metal façade made up of 40,000 Spam cans!
Visitors then follow the map and walk through the museum.  The purpose is to tell the story of the origins of Hormel, Spam, and how widespread it still is around the world.  One clever section, designed as a kitchen with a wall sized screen, lets you select a country where Spam is popular and then a movie follows with a "local" Julia Childs or Rachel Ray kind of person demonstrating a native "Spam" recipe from their country.  We chose Korea.  We now know how to make a native Korean dish made up of fresh vegetables (heavy on the shitake mushrooms and onions), Kim Chi, and Spam that is artfully arranged. 
    We found out that Spam is particularly popular in Hawaii, and they have an annual street fair there featuring Spam recipes.  The Hormel company developed a special variety of the product called "Spammy", loaded with nutrients that is distributed to undernourished children in Guatemala.  Finally, we found out that there is not only regular Spam, but 9 other varieties as well.
     As one might expect, there is a very large souvenir store devoted to everything Spam, including of course a Spam mouse pad.  Resisting temptation, we left with only our free brochure.  
     We drove on to our nighttime campground, the KOA Albert Lea/Austin and spent the afternoon doing laundry and cleaning up the RV.
 
     Our plan was to leave early Wednesday morning and drive to the Winnebago factory in Forest River, Iowa-the largest RV plant in the world.  We knew there was a factory tour at 1pm, and thought it would be fun to visit.  After driving there, we found we wouldn't get done until about 3:30.  This wouldn't work with our plans, so we decided to pass on it.  Instead, we headed off to the south and east and our new plan is to visit the Herbert Hoover museum Thursday morning.  As our RV is still under warranty, we took the opportunity to go to their service desk-we have some minor problems with our front window shades that require repair or replacement.  The very helpful service person located our part numbers, but advised us we would not be able to get the new blinds installed until possibly Friday.  Instead, It looks like we will plan on spending part of a day at Fort Worth dealership while visiting Jeff's family in Dallas.
     The drive to our nighttime campground took another couple of hours, so we're in Newton Iowa tonight and tomorrow.  Nice shaded campground with lots of trees, large lots, few customers and reasonable pricing.