Day 73: Jackson, MN

Stop 43: Jackson, MN

Today's 140 mile trip took us across a lot of beautiful farmland. The corn goes on for miles. The only time that it's not corn is when it's soy beans, the alternate crop that, apparently, restores the soil so that they can grow more corn. The rolling prairie that we saw yesterday seems to be flattening out as we move west.

As we normally do on travel days, we stopped at a rest area so that we could eat lunch back in the trailer. This rest stop had signs directing us to a "Golden Spike Monument". We had to see what that was about. Didn't realize that they even used spikes in building interstates.

Once we were settled, we needed to make a Walmart run. The closest was in Spirit Lake, IA. We won't be adding Iowa to our state count (since the trailer wasn't in tow), but here's the sign anyway.

 

Along the way to and from Spirit Lake, we passed a drive-in theater at the intersection of 2 small highways out in the corn. On the way to, we decided that it must be an abandoned relic. Coming from, we examined it more closely. Sure enough, the weedy lot included a snack bar / projection booth, a screen, and a small marquee that said that Wolverine is showing nightly. Kristen is kicking herself that she didn't get a picture.

 

Since there was no "Welcome to Minnesota" sign yesterday (or maybe we missed it), we decided to take advantage of our second chance coming back from Iowa. I nicknamed Kristen "Quick Draw" the other day. I may need to change that to "Slow Hands". In all fairness, this sign was well off the road and blended with the background perfectly (i.e., camouflaged sign). We were looking for it, knew where it had to be and still almost missed it entirely.



Finally, our home for the night:

-J-