Limburger With Mayo

August 13-15

We’re on our way home, stopping for one night each in several places along the way.

I had to stop at a hospital in Sioux Falls for a routine blood test, and while we were sitting in the waiting room, Joanna picked up a brochure about flax seed. 

It said Charlemagne recognized the nutruitional value of flax seed and encouraged his subjects to plant it. Wow. We’re way out here in cowboy country and up pops a reference to Charlemagne. I almost feel like I’m in Amsterdam again. 

Saturday the 13th took us from Sioux Falls to Rochester, Minn. It’s a fair size town for this region and is full of motels. It looks, indeed, like a tourist center.

But the real draw is medicine. The main industry in Rochester is the Mayo Clinic. One of the people at the motel told Joanna that the clinic can draw as many as a million people to the town every year.

We had dinner at Twigs Tavern and Grille. I had butternut ravioli in a cream sauce and a glass of pinot grigio. Joanna had spaghetti with pork and marinara sauce. It came covered with melted mozzarella. 

It was too much cheese for her taste, so she gave me most of it, along with some of the pasta and pork.

My ravioli was actually sweet. But it was also very good. Certainly I was in need of a change. 

That goes for the wine too, I guess. I enjoyed it. I rarely ask for white wine unless it’s from the Rhone Valley or something to go with turkey,  but it was just right with this strange pasta dish.

We went for a walk, past a serious junk shop selling antiques, at least one of which it deemed a “museum piece.”  From which museum it didn’t say.

There were stores selling overpriced clothing, and one full of Halloween stuff, including a framed picture of a skeleton labeled “Eat, Drink, and Be Scary.”

After a few blocks we came back to a corner where I could get in touch with my roots again.

This was a brew pub called Grand Rounds, on the corner of South Broadway and Third Street Southwest. 

There are four Third Streets in Rochester. Four firsts, seconds, and so forth, one for each of four points of the compass—northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest. 

Ground Rounds had a trio of its own brews, including a lager and a wheat. It also had something the bartender called a sour. 

I was impressed until I tried it, not even a true ale, but a wheat and lager combo of some kind. They add a little lemon to it to give it the sour edge. 

Real sours use wild yeast. They are ancient brews. Drinking a good one is exciting—like standing on a spot where Charlemagne had somebody’s head cut off or something.

I had an IPA made by another brewery and that was all right. The hops tasted like pine needles, as they often do, and there was some fragrance.

8/14

Sunday we moved on to Monroe, Wis. 

We recrossed the Mississippi River on Interstate 90. The highway is still under construction and it has changed in five weeks. So we didn’t get to the welcome center on the Minnesota bank.

The corresponding center in Wisconsin may have been bulldozed away. At least, all I saw as we passed the site was bulldozer and lots of exposed dirt.

There are lots of serious hills around there, by the way. More than I expected in Wisconsin.

Not having a rest stop to enjoy, we turned off the interstate at La Crosse for gas and a rest. But serendipity intervened. A sign pointed us toward the Guadalupe Shrine, and we had to follow it.

We found the shrine on the outskirts of La Crosse. It consists of several buildings. One, where you start, is the Pilgrim Center. You climb a winding paved path and next come to a votive chapel. The church that is the shrine itself is farther up the hill. We lit some candles and said some prayers. 

Monuments along the trail from the pilgrim center to the church include a statue representing Kateri Tekakwitha, or Lily of the Mohawks, the first native American saint. There is also a bas relief of the Holy Family that includes portraits of the donors with the bishop, a tradition that goes back at least to the Renaissance in Florence and Rome.

Although I had eaten reasonably hearty breakfast, I was so hungry that we had lunch at the cafe attached to the shrine. 

There was herb-crusted chicken that reminded Joanna of Shake’N Bake, tender roast pork, cheesy mashed potatoes (she took some without cheese), and mixed vegetables, which were the hit of the day for Joanna. She took seconds of those. 

During lunch, Joanna realized that we were visiting the shrine on August 14, the day before the Feast of the Assumption. 

We drove another 150 miles on I-90 and U.S. 18 in Madison to get to the state highway that took us to Monroe.

Wisconsin 69 took us through New Glarus, Wis., which bills itself as “America’s Little Switzerland” and “Home of the Spotted Cow.” (No, really. I didn’t make that up.)

Most of the building fronts—the Anchor Bank branch, the Chalet Landhaus Inn, the CPA’s office, the supermarket, the Storage Haus, and the bowling alley—are dressed with window boxes and dark wood gables. The town even has a chiropraktiker.

It also has a brewery. I tried its Moon Man session ale, which they call a No Coast pale ale. Light flavor, like a lot of sessions, but very fragrant.

A little farther, we came to Monticello, where we stopped to read a historical marker. Nickolaus Gerber, who learned cheese-making in his native Switzerland, in 1868 established Green County’s first Limburger cheese factory.

We got to the AmericInn in Monroe and found a bar right across the street. Wow. I can walk there. I don’t have to count beers. And maybe even be able to walk back.

No such luck. It was closed. We went to a Piggly Wiggly where we found some Wisconsin Cheddar (no Limburger, please) and a six pack of Moon Man. With that and a box of crackers later, I was set. Joanna bought a peach for good measure.

Monday we entered Illinois on the way to Merrillville, Indiana. It may have been a bit of luck that we stopped at the Illinois Welcome Center on I-90.

We asked for a roadmap. The lady asked where we were going. 

She warned us not to take the I-90/290 route through the Chicago area. Construction, she said, had made some of the intersections risky.

She showed us an alternative route to Merrillville. 

Traffic and tolls are heavy around Chicago. We spent long periods creeping through construction zones. 

We left Monroe, Wis., around 10 and got to the hotel in Merrillville around 2:30.

The trip is supposed to take less than three hours. But that’s all right. 

For some reason, while I was driving, I developed a craving for shrimp cooked in butter. 

And damn, what do I see when I get to La Quinta? A Red Lobster practically next door to us. I’m all set again—provided, that is, that it’s still open.

Be well, all.

Harry