Iowa, Part 1 - A Holy Grotto, and Getting Spammed in Minnesota [240526-27]

For our first day in Iowa, we continued our recent trend of "taking a break from hiking out in nature" to see something rather unique - and unexpected, for Iowa.

(Editor's note:  don't forget to check out Trailer 1 - "Niagara Falls, and Dumpster Diving in Canada [240805-07]", if you haven't already!)

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Leaving Mitchell we headed east on our way out of South Dakota.  Along the way, we passed these interesting sculptures, that a reverse geocoding of the image metadata later revealed to be the Porter Sculpture Park in Montrose.

Our next leg would have us crossing in and out of Minnesota a bit, with our initial crossing at 11:20 a.m.  We stopped at a rest area just over the border that parallels the welcome sign, so Tom had to hoof it over a hill to get a photo (there was a pretty well worn footpath out to the sign, so he clearly wasn't the first person to do this 😉).

About an hour and a half later, we turned south by a city whose name made for an interesting welcome sign.  Corn was starting to sprout in the area.

We crossed over into Iowa around 1:10 p.m., but the little tiny farm road we were on was too insignificant to have a welcome sign posted.  A little after 2 p.m. we arrived at our next attraction:  The Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend.  Their website claims it's "the largest man-made Grotto in the world and is home to one of the largest collection of precious stones and gems found anywhere in one location" but it doesn't really come close to describing what you'll see if you go there (and it's worth the trip, if you're ever even remotely in the area).  The story as given in the literature goes as follows:

The story of how the Grotto came into being is as moving as are the scenes it portrays. It is generally told as a fact that as a young seminarian, Father Dobberstein became critically ill with pneumonia. As he fought for his life he prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary (the Mother of God) to intercede for him for the grace of health. He promised to build a shrine in her honor of he lived. The illness passed, the student completed his studies and after his ordination, he came to West Bend as Pastor in 1898. For over a decade he was stockpiling rocks and precious stones.

The actual work of giving permanence to his promise began to take shape in 1912. The designed purpose of the Grotto is to tell in silent stone made spiritually eloquent, the story of man’s fall and his redemption by Christ, the savior of the world.

The Trinity Grotto was the first one completed by Father Dobberstein, between 1912-17.  It's built in three half-circles, in honor of the Three Divine Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

The Paradise Lost Grotto portrays the Garden of Eden story.

The Ten Commandments Grotto.

The Sermon on the Mount Grotto.

The Garden of Gethsemane Grotto.

The Stations of the Cross were spread out over a fairly wide area, with the first 12 constructed very similarly - a Venetian mosaic displayed in its own pillar - and arranged on two sides of a corridor.  The 13th station is set high up on top, and you have to climb a staircase to see it, and the 14th station has a grotto of its own.

The Grotto of the Resurrection.

The Stable in Bethlehem (you can tell that these grottos weren't pre-planned and laid out in any sort of chronological order ahead of time 😉).

The Grotto of Nazareth.

Perhaps the prettiest display of all is The Christmas Chapel, which was built inside Saints Peter and Paul Church (next to the Grotto), because the specimens used (including a 300 lb Brazilian Amethyst) were deemed by Fr. Dobberstein to be too delicate to withstand the weather and changing seasons outside.

After the Grotto, we headed back into Minnesota, arriving in the city of Austin - where we'd be Wallydocking again (#8, for those keeping count) around 8 p.m.

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Monday morning (Memorial Day!) we were up around 6:30 a.m. after a not-so-restful night's sleep because apparently the Austin Walmart pipes the Walmart Radio station through their external speakers, which they don't turn off after the store closes.  Maybe other Walmarts do this too and we've never noticed before because of road noise, big rigs idling their engines all night, etc.

After a couple of brief shopping stops, we arrived at our attraction for the day around 10 a.m.:  the SPAM Museum.

Their story of  "How SPAM got its name" was less than conclusive, so we're going to continue to claim that it's short for "SPiced hAM" 🤣.

This display explained how "SPAM" got its negative connotation in technology, and - more importantly - let you watch the original Monty Python SPAM skit in its entirety.  (Tom was more excited by the latter than Christine was 😉.)

A portion of the museum was dedicated to Hormel/SPAM's contributions to the war efforts of the past century.

This display of cans through the years included several from the era when a key system was used to open the can, which split the can in half - making it much easier to get the SPAM out than the modern cans where you have to try wrangling it out the top while it's suctioning itself to the sides (in Tom's humble opinion).

In the "Global Marketplace" section of the museum, there were little booths set up for a number of countries showing how SPAM is marketed and received in those countries.  We found the fancy gift boxes from China and South Korea particularly amusing.

The "best" country's display, though, may have been England's - where they had a Spamalot themed "Angry Birds" type game you could play.  (We're much better at that game when we're not trying to record the screen with a phone in one hand - really, we are! 😉)

Wha...? Why...?  Eww...?

Now these might've been fun to have. 🤣

Awww...now that's cute!  (Note, though, that the kit doesn't include anything to help you make the colored eyes, nose, whiskers, or flower - so you'll really just end up with a rice-sculped Hello Kitty head out-of-the-box unless you're really adept with scissors/knives and seaweed sheets and some vegetables 🤣.)

We visited the gift shop, thinking that SPAM might be for sale there under factory-store discount pricing.  Boy were we wrong - if anything, it was being sold at a substantial premium over what you'd pay at a normal grocery store (even for the normal flavors; Limited Edition flavors were even more).  There was a LOT of SPAM branded merch available there, though.  Although they only came around with SPAM-ples (samples of SPAM) twice while we were there, we still thought the museum was a fun way to spend a couple of hours.

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Leaving Austin,

we drove 30 minutes east to the the city of Spring Valley, where we stopped at the Valley Wash to do some laundry.

From there it was another 100 miles southeast to our next destination.  The route was notable for two reasons:  the first was that we were in Amish country again, as evidenced by the signs - as well as an actual buggy seen parked at one of the farms.

The second is that we happened to be (completely unintentionally) driving along the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway.

We arrived at our destination around 5:30 p.m.:  Pike's Peak State Park.

Tomorrow we'd be resuming our "usual" nature and hiking activities - if the drizzling rain that had recently started doesn't turn into a deluge at an inappropriate time first!