Minnesota - Day 2 - Austin and SPAM®

Albert Lea/Austin KOA, Hayward

Friday, 2 September 2022

Once again, the frig turned itself off for no reason I could see.  It was working last night when I opened it, but this morning the interior temp was 50°.  It's just not good for food storage, let alone for stuff in the freezer, to go through temperature fluctuations like that.  And I haven't got a clue why it's doing it or how to stop it - except to somehow find a refrigerator mechanic that knows RVs and can work on it without expecting me to leave it parked in his lot for a month or two until he can get around to it.  So I continue to complain but put up with it.

Although I was seriously pooped after some long long drives 2 days in a row, I decided to go ahead into Austin today because I still needed groceries I hadn't been able to find in other places, and figured I might as well tour the SPAM® Museum while I was there.  (I never bother with the ® mark, but the SPAM® people include it always, so I'm doing it here out of courtesy.)

today's route

As you can see, I didn't have far to drive to get into Austin.  We stopped first at a park I'd found online.  It was very large and very nice with a hike/bike trail around a lake and lots of grass and trees, which is what Dexter liked.  I saw they had a very large water park, next to a large swimming pool with a variety of types of slides into the water.

I'd heard something on the radio about fall colors in Minnesota, and I asked some folks working on park renovations when the leaves might be expected to start changing colors here.  The consensus was that by the last week in September, the colors in northern MN were either at or past their peak, and that it would be into October before they hit here in southern MN.  

Good information to help me plan my time here.  I'd originally thought about rushing up north to keep from getting snowed in or something, but now I'll take my time about getting up there.  It sounds like even if I'm too early for the colors, I'll most likely miss the snow.

From there we went a few more blocks into town to the SPAM® Museum, and here's what I found:

They had the usual information about how the company was founded by George Hormel and a partner, who eventually left the business.  Here are a couple of decisions Hormel made in the early days.

This was printed on the side of an old icebox and is hard to read.
I'm including it because it explains about doing a vacuum seal of the meat in a can, and then cooking it in the can, not before.

This is such a spectacular crime that I had to include it.

I'd forgotten Dinty Moore stew was a Hormel product - and here's when that happened.

How the can came into being.

This is how SPAM® is made:

The ingredients, illustrated.  See enlargements below.

It was in WWII that SPAM® really came into its own.  Hormel fed millions of meals to soldiers and to our allies in Europe, where food - especially meat - was in shortage.

Including praise from Khrushchev.

And as we all know, sadly, WWII wasn't the last war our country fought, so the need for food for soldiers continues.

These next photos aren't really related to anything (besides SPAM®) but were too oddball not to include.

I looked for his statue, but it may have been too small for me to notice.

The story of a British couple who got married here
(see their photo below).

Their wedding photo.
He legally changed his middle name to "I Love SPAM®"
(see story above).

The museum had little sections for each of these 6 areas where SPAM® is popular.

Below is the original photo that I edited for the how-to-make-SPAM® above.  But I'm putting the original in here to remind myself what these pandemic times have been like.  Both a young mom and her kid are wearing masks as if that's a reasonable thing to do (I had mine on, too), unlike so many I see that act as if there's no problem any more, though almost 400 Americans are still dying every day from covid.  I know - those numbers are infinitesimal compared to the height in 2020 - but it's still 146,000 people a year, and considering I meet nobody but strangers . . . well, it's something I think about.

On my way out of town, I passed a business sign that said "Austin City Limits," but I wasn't able to see what kind of business.  I looked it up online, but according to the internet, the only thing by that name is in Texas.  Still, using the name of the Texas thing makes the Minnesota thing more memorable.

We stopped for gasoline, and at a liquor store and a grocery store - in Minnesota only beer can be bought in grocery stores.  Wine and liquor are confined to separate liquor stores.  And we stopped at another park for Dext to walk in before going back to the campground, where we'll be for the next 3 days.