No great rush to get going today as the place that Lyn wanted to go did not open until 10AM. The place in question was a store called “Nancy’s Notions”, which is run by a person who has her own TV sewing show. Lyn has been a fan of this show for many years, and when I suggested she may want to take a more scenic route to California via Beaver Dam, she jumped at the chance (I figured a few brownie points may come my way as well!!)
While Lyn was doing her thing I was off on an errand of mercy (hopefully collecting even more brownie points). Just before we left Lyn’s long arm quilting machine decided to die! She switched it on one morning and there was nothing; absolutely nothing lit up moved or beeped. After checking the obvious like was it plugged in, had the fuse blown etc, it was time to call the professionals. I called the dealer who sold and installed it, who in turn put me in contact with a factory technician who coincidentally lived near Beaver Dam where we were staying. We arranged to meet in a small town about 10 miles away, I would give him some parts from the dead machine and he would have them checked and fixed. Once fixed, the parts would be sent to our final destination in Alabama. This will save us a lot of aggro with mailing and Canada Customs!
Once all this was done I headed back to town to extricate Lyn from the store, seems my timing was perfect as she was ready to leave…. but not empty handed!!
We traveled about 40 miles to pick up the interstate, then just headed west for 300 miles, climbing slowly up to 1400 feet. As we went west we got into more fertile country, we also saw more herds of cattle which supported Wisconsin’s slogan of Americas Dairy Land
Random View on the Interstate
We then passed through some rocky hill areas and into Minnesota, where the earth was a rich black colour, with plenty of farms all over the countryside.
The road was pretty well deserted, both in terms of traffic and civilisation. At one point there was no MacDonald’s (or any other coffee stop for close to 100 miles!) .
We arrived in Blue Earth Minnesota around 5:40, checked into the hotel then went walking and geocaching. We found three caches close by, including this well hidden, micro cache!!
The town of Blue Earth is closely associated with the Green Giant food company, and the local area supplies much of its produce. The giant is 58.5 ft tall and weighs in at 8,000 lbs.
The last cache of the day took us 8 miles south to the Minnesota – Iowa State line, where there was meant to be a cache right on the border, that one escaped us, but we did get to briefly visit a new State.