This is a multi-part trip report. If you haven’t already, you should start at the beginning. Remember that you can click on any of the photos to see larger versions of them.
My mom is 89 years old and lives in the country, in this house, by herself. After she broke a hip in May of 2025 – just over a year ago – I spent most of the summer there, helping her reorganize her house and rebuild her routine so that she could remain as independent as possible. Then, she fell again that July, putting a fracture along the titanium replacement of her OTHER hip joint. She insisted on returning home again and since then she has been tenacious about retaining what she refers to as her ‘autonomy.’ She doesn’t like for us to visit for more than a couple of days at a time, but our trip to Minnesota gives us a chance to check up on her as we drive north.
I talk to her three times a week on the phone (more than that is ‘hovering’, she says) and I order her groceries online twice a month. But it’s hard to know how someone’s doing without laying eyes on them. She’s doing fine. Being stubborn is serving her well.
We don’t even stay for breakfast, opting instead for an early start and a drive through at Donut Palace in Chillicothe before a long day of driving north on highway 65.
It’s a pretty straight shot through Iowa. There aren’t a lot of curves and hills available for entertainment, but we do stop to visit an impressively large stainless steel turkey at the headquarters of the Iowa Turkey Federation.
I’ve been hungry for pancakes for days at this point, for some reason no one understands, so we stop near Des Moines at a chain restaurant with good reviews. I order plain-jane pancakes and Bryan orders whatever this is – a pile of fried chicken, waffles, and bacon with a scoop of whipped brown sugar butter on top.
We end the day at McCullough Park, in the company of a great blue heron. I think we’re asleep before the sun sets.
And then we’re up early. It’s Monday and we’re in Minnesota and we’ve got places to be. Places like Who’s Bar, as we duck over into Wisconsin to drink a New Glarus beer on tap. Our neighbor, Brian Up The Hill, imports New Glarus beer for us on occasion. But everything’s always better on tap.
Our friends had also told us we should find a place to order a Jucy Lucy. (Think of a meatball, with cheese inside, smashed and cooked like a burger, then put on a bun with more cheese.). (This seems excessive, but it IS Wisconsin, after all.)
Who’s is the only place we’ve ever seen a sloppy joe on the menu. Think about it – we all grew up on sloppy joes, but have you ever actually ordered one? At a restaurant? On purpose? I didn’t think so.
As promised, the New Glarus IS better on tap and turns out to be a perfect way to wash down the greasy sandwiches and tots.
Inspired by our friend Britt Thompson, who has visited more World’s Largest Random Things than anyone else we know, we try to visit dumb stuff when we’re on long car trips. Usually we find things using an app called Roadside America (more on that later) but this one wasn’t even in the book. We just stop for gas in rural Minnesota and out of the blue I’m almost eaten by a giant walleye.
