"Entry for Thursday, 21 August 1997

Parade float on display when entering Preston, MN.

Inside the Canton Cafe in Canton, MN. They have great homemade banana cream pie.

The Iowa state line. There wasn't anyone around to take my picture with it.

Last Modified on 9/23/97 at 18:07:41

Day's Narrative: The motel had complimentary breakfast this morning. That saved some money. As I sat by the window having breakfast I could see the rush hour traffic building up. While waiting for breakfast, I became more and more anxious because I had to ride about 10 miles (16 km) of rush hour interstate-like highway before I got off on a more relaxed two lane US 52 outside of town.

As it turned out, after the first couple of miles, all the traffic was coming into town, and my side of the road was relatively free of traffic. So it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

This is farm country here and there are many smells which one encounters while riding along, such as new mown hay and that fresh smell after a rain. One of the most pungent is manure. The smell of cow manure mostly comes from roadside farms, feedlots and dairies. That's not so bad. I kind of grew up with the cow manure smell, and I'm accustomed to it.

The worst manure smell of all is chicken manure. It's so bad I have to hold my breath when passing those long barns of chickens. On a bicycle it seems to take forever to get by them. I wonder how the chicken farmers stand it.

I stopped in Preston, MN to get a snack and discovered a large fish float possibly left over from a parade (see photo). The local favorite subject of art of the pictures in the restaurants around here is also fish. Fish are to Minnesota as cowboys and Indians are to New Mexico.

Around lunch time I noticed I was on a collision course with a rain storm on the left. I burned up the road getting to the next town of Canton, MN (pop. 352) and arrived at the Canton Cafe just minutes ahead of the rain. Again one sees the result of years of clean living.

This was a great place to eat lunch (see photo). Connie hadn't caught up with me yet and I kept waiting for her to pass by. No luck.

I had their lunch special of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and peas, followed by their homemade banana cream pie. When the owner discovered I was going cross country it caused quite a stir in the restaurant, mostly because they couldn't understand how anyone could be crazy enough to do it.

The rain stopped shortly after I finished, and within a few miles I crossed into Iowa (see photo).

Tomorrow should be sunny with a slight tailwind. I'm going to try to skip stopping at Prairie du Chien, WI, and push on to Dubuque, IA. This will make tomorrow's distance about 107 miles (172 km), but will take a day off the travel time. This is the hilly part of Iowa, people have told me, so I expect I will be pooped tomorrow night.

[Connie] I spent an hour after getting the truck loaded trying to manhandle the back window of the canopy back into position so I could close it. It had somehow slid over preventing closure. I had all but taken the window apart when the motel groundsman, who had been cutting grass, came over and lifted and wiggled the thing back into place. All I had been thinking of was brute force and it obviously wasn't working. He saved the day. Rochester had, on the previous day, had an episode of racial nastiness to a visitor, leaving the woman feeling that Rochester was not a nice place to be. The man who helped me sure left a nice feeling about Rochester with me.

Some time ago, when I was still director of the Fuller Lodge Art Center in Los Alamos, there was an Ambassador program for the town. The main premise was that any given person, often someone in a service industry might be the only contact a visitor has with the town. In that case, each person needs to treat visitors --everyone in fact-- as nicely as possible so that visitors go away feeling good about the town. I think Rochester had one in and one out in the last couple of days. I will speak well of the community and the lady who was harassed will speak badly of it.

Decorah could be the model town for Garrison Keeler's Mythical Lake Woebegone. It is a Norwegian town, down to the Sons of Norway Clubhouse, it is only missing Lake Woebegone's statue of the Unknown Norwegian. It's slightly hilly with trees everywhere, so there's a green background to everything. The sun came out today and it was glorious.

Return

© Ray & Connie Poore, 1997