Just for fun

I took this picture at a rest stop somewhere in Minnesota: Doritos in mustard, ketchup, and pickle flavors. I've never seen these in New York—or the taco pizza, baby back ribs or fried pickle ranch potato chips in the next aisle—so I had not realized how much American ingenuity goes into coming up with new kinds of junk food.

The highway convenience stores in the Midwest are quite an experience. Some of the bigger ones have a hundred different kinds of prepared food, as well as the packaged stuff, but even the smaller ones have an amazing variety of different flavors of chips, cookies, beef jerky and candy, while those of us hoping for something slightly healthier are limited to a few shriveled salads dying of loneliness at the far end of an aisle that might as well be labeled Afterthoughts.

I have been to 7-11's in Tokyo that had candy offerings in some truly unexpected flavors—and colors—and in the UK you can buy crisps (potato chips) in roast chicken or steak, ale and caramelised onion flavors, but I think the United States remains the undisputed junk food capital of the world.

Saturday reflections

I took this picture as we were trying to navigate our way out of the car rental lot at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. I liked the abstract weirdness of that grid and the reflections on the car.

Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

Of course there was an entire exhibit devoted to Monty Python, and explaining, with some pride I think, how junk email came to be called Spam.

Meaty Juicy Satisfaction

That is what Spam is called in China, a fact I learned at the Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota. Although the museum rightly focuses on all things Spammish, they also include exhibits for other Hormel products, like chili. Hence this giant chili dog. (It's allegedly a sofa, though I'm not sure where exactly you're supposed to sit.)

So after breakfasting on ice cream, lunch consisted of a Spam slider. I haven't eaten Spam since I was a kid, nor have I wanted to, but I have to admit that taste brought back memories of sitting at the kitchen table in San Francisco eating my mom's grilled cheese and Spam sandwiches for Saturday dinner. Proust's Spam sandwich.

Saturday reflections

Another look at the infant Mississippi River in Itasca State Park. The reflections are pretty feeble, but it's what I've got.

Wading

It's technically summer, but it was raining much of today and not very warm. But that didn't stop these brave adventurers from wading through—the Mississippi River?

Today was the first leg of our road trip out of Minneapolis, and one of the places we stopped was Itasca State Park, which contains the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

It's hard to believe that that unimpressive stream of lake overflow is the same Ol' Man River that goes from Minneapolis to New Orleans. There are more pictures, but I'm too tired to look at them.

Also in Red Wing

Architectural detail on a downtown building.

The World's Largest Boot

For some reason, when I talk about the interesting places I've been and the things I've seen, I don't always remember to mention that I have actually seen The World's Largest Boot. But here is photographic evidence, in Red Wing, Minnesota, home of the shoe company of the same name.

More downtown Minneapolis

Another picture I never got around to posting from Minneapolis: the Wells Fargo Center, designed by César Pelli.

Though the Art Deco design looks very early 20th century, it was actually completed in 1988.

Saturday reflections

 

Downtown Minneapolis, in 2022.

I'll be back in Minneapolis Tuesday, though only for a quick overnight at an airport hotel before heading west on a road trip early Wednesday morning.

Saturday reflections

Continuing with cleaning out the old folders: the Depot Rink Train Shed in Minneapolis, two summers ago.

Saturday reflections

The stadium in Minneapolis last summer.

Saturday reflections

Here's a flashback: an inlet on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis last summer.

Saturday reflections

Okay, a little late. COVID and all the usual winter viruses are running rampant through the Saturday English program; my classes were canceled and I slept for eighteen hours.

This is Foshay Street in Minneapolis last summer.

Saturday reflections

The US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis is supposed to suggest a Viking ship. (I have seen actual Viking ships and don't really see the resemblance.) But I do love the way it reflects the streets of downtown Minneapolis below.

Urban poetry

Say it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue...piano.

In Mill Ruins Park.

Speaking of mills

The Gold Medal Flour sign sits atop the grain elevators of one of the defunct mills in Mill Ruins Park; that mill complex is a National Historic Landmark. The sign was unlit for more than thirty years after the mill closed in 1965, and was restored in 2000.

You can just see the Pillsbury's Best Flour sign in the other picture. That's also an old mill complex, across the river from Mill Ruins Park, but this one is being converted to artist's lofts.

Mill Ruins Park

This park along the Mississippi contains the ruins of several abandoned flour mills. I didn't really explore much because I was hot and sunburned after walking across the river.

Farewell to Minnesota

This is the bridge over the Mississippi River a few blocks from my hotel. I walked over it on Friday afternoon, and it was hot, and there was no shelter from the sun. I quickly wished that I had a hat—or that I had remembered to put on sunscreen.

It's going to be over a hundred degrees here today, so I am getting out of town in the nick of time.

Minnehaha Falls

The waterfall the park is named for.

Though Longfellow never visited this waterfall, he stole the name for the heroine of his poem The Song of Hiawatha. I still shudder remembering our awful sing-songy recitations of portions of that masterwork in grammar school: 

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

But the waterfall, and the park, are lovely.