RV Birth. Canned Meat. Retail Overlode

The beginning of the return has started towards the end.  Yesterday I left Missouri and aimed towards Seattle.  As I had come east on I-90 I decided to head west on I-94 (and go north to get out of the heat).  I made my way up through Iowa and into Minnesota.  When I looked up the camp ground it mentioned some near by attractions.

The first was Winnebago Industries factory!  I had looked it up before but forgot it was here.  The factory started and is still in Forest City, Iowa.  In 1986 this is the place my RV was born!  It felt like coming home again after 26 years.  In 1986 I was still in college and had just bought my first new car.  It was a Toyota 4-Runner and I kept it for 20 years and put enough miles on it to drive to the moon (230,000)

A 1967 Motorhome.  Looks a lot like mine.

The factory tour was interesting.  It covers a huge area with many buildings.  There are about 2400 employees (down from over 4000 a few years ago).  Winnebago makes most all of its own parts.  From the pillows and covers to metal frames and plastic formed body parts and wood cabinets (most all from raw materials).  They buy the chassis from different manufactures but do all the motorhome assembly.  They take about 6-10 weeks from start to finish to put together the 3000 parts.

The man who made Winnebago it's name.  He had his customers figured out.

This is the inside of a new RV.  Bigger then apartments I've had.

I stopped at a Jiffy Lube the other day for an oil change.  There were a couple of younger guys helping with the service.  One told me the brake lights on the top back of the RV didn't work.  I don't think they'd seen a vehicle without a center break light.  Those were just running lights.  The other kid tried to start the RV after they finished.  It kept turning over and the older guy finally yelled at him to step on the gas.  I don't think he had every started a car with a carburetor instead of electronic fuel injection.  Another thing I noticed was that my RV model is a "Chieftain". Winnebago is from the local indians and in 1986 it was still okay to use indian names.  I guess I'm getting old along with the RV.


The next big attraction was the SPAM museum!  Hormel Foods, the maker of spam started in Austin, Minnesota.  Here's what I learnd.  Spam is pork, ham, salt, water,modified potato starch, sugar and sodium nitrite.  It's all mixed up raw and put in the can.  It's sealed under a vacuum and then cooked in the can.  They have 11 varities now.  At the two plants in the US they can produce 44,000 cans an hour.  The process 19,000 hogs a day.  It take 45 miles of labels to cover a days production.  So far they have made 8.6 billion cans of Spam.

Who's the SPAM?

Where SPAM comes from on the pig.

SPAM delivery guy.

I will have to say it made me think about processed food after coming off the farm.  On the farm all the meat is from animals with names raised on site.  One pig one bacon.  Who knows how many different pigs are in one can of Spam.

On a slightly different note I listened to a radio program during the drive.  It was talking about the german scientist Haber who invented the process to "fix" nitrogen from the air for fertilizer.  Before this all the fertilized came from natural sources like manure and guano.  One disturbing thing was that they have estimated that 50% of the nitrogen in our bodies is from man made fertilizer.


The last stop for the day was the Mall of America.  It's the second largest retail space in the county with 530 shops.  It is over 4,000,000 square feet with an amusement park in the middle complete with a roller coaster and aquarium.  It employees 12,000 people with 40 million visitors annually.  The mall would cover two 40 acre farms.  It could hold 7 Yankee stadiums.

The park in the center of the mall.

It's hard to tell from the photo but that's a two story Lego transformer and 1/2 size helicopter.  All made of Legos.

I didn't buy anything.