L.J. Golden – Just Exploring

“So, was your mom putting me on with that ‘Welcome to Minnesohtah?” I asked Amanda as we pulled out of her parents’ driveway.

“No. That’s her real accent.”

This was my second time in Minnesota, but I was told that now, away from the Twin Cities, I was seeing the “real” Minnesota. I’m not sure what that means, apart from the accents and lots of farmland. But I liked it.

I went to Rochester for four days to visit a Peace Corps friend who was home from her current teaching job in China. I spent the first two days working from her uncle’s house, which is about 16 miles west of Rochester (which, for the record, is 60 miles from Minneapolis, and not a suburb like I thought). There’s not a lot out there, but there is wifi, which is all I need to work. On Friday, we left the country home to do the grand tour of Rochester.

Downtown Rochester

The day started with breakfast at Dunn Brothers Coffee. Apparently, this is a chain, but it was new to me. They offer full breakfast, and after our egg sandwiches, we had breakfast dessert (pumpkin bread and a cinnamon roll).

To work off the breakfast dessert, we did a significant amount of walking, first at Silver Lake, which is more of a very large pond. A power plant nearby keeps the water warm enough so that geese stick around Rochester year-round, which means an abundance of goose poop — so much that a local artist made goose poop art that was displayed at the Mayo clinic. After visiting the geese, we headed downtown (which is about five minutes from the lake) for more walking.

A sad specimen of the Minnesota state bird.

I’ve heard that St. Paul and Minneapolis have sky-walks connecting buildings so that Minnesotans can minimize their exposure to the bitter winters. Rochester has a similar system of sky-walks and tunnels connecting parking garages, a shopping mall, and the hospitals (on Thursday night, we got from the parking garage to right around the corner from our dinner destination without having to go outside). Since it was a fabulous fall day, we didn’t take full advantage of the tunnels and sky-walks. But it’s good to know they’re there, right?

A sky-walk connecting a parking garage to the courthouse.

Our downtown exploration started at the mall (the Shops at University Square), where we visited Amanda’s favorite Barnes and Noble. It’s in an old theater, and it’s even better than the old Houston Bookstop (for one, this one is still open). The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, the old ticket window showcases books, there’s a castle on the second floor, and the ceiling is royal blue with little pin-prick stars. I want to be a cat and live in that place.

From the best Barnes and Noble ever, we walked across the Peace Plaza to the Mayo Clinic, where I tweeted my location. I now realize “At the Mayo Clinic” is a concerning tweet to get without any context. It was just part of the tour, since the hospital plays such a major role in the town. A new building, the Gonda Building was added about 10 years ago, and it’s full of granite and marble and art. The main foyer has a Chihuly, and several Warhols hang in the hall next to the cafeteria between Gonda and the old building. Rather than going to an art museum, school field trips go to certain floors at the Mayo Clinic to see specific art work. Unfortunately, we didn’t see the goose poop paintings. But we did take in some interesting sculptures around the clinic:

Weeeeeeee!

Before lunch, we continued our walking at Quarry Hill, a nature center with trails, paved paths and caves. We found the quarry. It looks like a desert at this time of year.

In the afternoon, we picked up another Peace Corps friend who’s in his first year of med school at Mayo. He needed some apples, so we went to Sekkap’s, an orchard and pumpkin patch. We bought apples (I got honey), then went through the tiniest corn maze ever. It really wasn’t a maze at all, but it also wasn’t meant for adults.

From there, back home to the middle of nowhere (between Mantorville and Kasson!) for a fabulous dinner of cheesy potatoes. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to have the famed Minnesotan “hot dish”… in fact, I still don’t know what it is, besides some kind of casserole. I also didn’t eat cheese curds. But, the morning I left, we visited Amanda’s dad in his renovated barn-home, where I sampled elderberry jelly, corn cob jelly, and and honey butter. All very tasty, you betcha (for the record, I didn’t hear anyone say that, ever).