July 15, 2008 Winnebagos and SPAM

And now for something completely different. Today we left Jackson, MN for a tour of Winnebago Industries in Forest City, IA, about 1 ½ hours away from Jackson. We traveled through some of Minnesota’s beautiful farmland once again. Right, left, left, right, down roads on which we would see one or two cars at the most, and cornfields on each side as far as the eye could see. Oh, and a few windmills as well. As we drove down CR23 in Minnesota, a straight shot from I90 into Iowa, through more cornfields to the horizon, I spotted a woman coming out of her farm house to go to her mailbox to collect her mail. It occurred to me that that’s pretty amazing. Out here in the remote country, they get their daily mail, just like in Boston, or LA. There are a lot of things in this country that go right (for the most part).

We arrived at Winnebago Industries, the maker of the Winnebago RV, in time for the 11 am tour. They herded our group into a room to show us a little promo film on their RVs and then we boarded a bus to shuttle around their large facility. It struck Ray and me that we were veritable youngsters compared to all the others taking this tour. The tour itself was pretty interesting. We had the opportunity to go into some of the facilities and see how the units are put together, and what makes these RVs unique. The picture above is of a cutout promo of the owner of Winnebago and his philosophy, prominently featured in the little museum onsite. We liked his ideas... Now, all we have to do is scrape up the $100,000+ for the unit and the $50,000+ for the gas to drive it around, and we’re all set. Worth the trip…

After a brief stop in the Forest City park for lunch, we departed for Austin, MN, home of everyone’s favorite lunchmeat---------------------SPAM. In 2002, The Hormel Company built a museum dedicated to the history of SPAM in the town where it was originated, and where it is still made (fabricated, er….concocted, er…).The museum is done partly tongue-in-cheek, partly marketing, partly historically. They tell the story of the man who started the Hormel factory, how the company grew, its involvement in the WWII effort, and its growth into a multi-national company. Did you know there are 6 varieties of SPAM? Did you know that SPAM is made of pork, ham, sugar, salt, spices, potato starch and sodium nitrite? Find out all you ever wanted to learn about SPAM, (and more that you didn’t) here. It was fun and worth the stop.

On to Oakdale, WI where we will spend the night in our (you guessed it) KOA cabin.

See photos of the day here.