Day 4- Mustard, the Mississippi, and the long trek across Minnesota to Sioux Falls.

We started out early from Danny and Miki’s house in Illinois about 7:00 am because the whole household had to be at work. We said goodbye and started to trek out I-90 in search of a local coffee bar with internet. We found one at Meg’s café after getting lost a couple of times because the GPS had their old address. James set up the rap video and we checked in to make sure that the cats health certificates were ready and had the right date. (Thankfully they do!) While James rendered the videos, I selected just how far we were going to drive today (8 hours), selected a B&B in Sioux Falls that looked only mildly kitschy, and made sure we stopped at the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum… a vague childhood memory of thousands of mustard jars (HEAVEN!!) that led us on a several hour detour in Wisconsin in search of the yellowy-goodness. We made it up to Mt. Horeb with relative speed and loaded up on all kinds of mustard. The museum store lets you do tastings of whatever mustard you want. Mustards are divided up into many categories. To name a few: Spicy/hot, fruit, liquor, exotic, yellow. We learned that there is an annual Mustard Festival in Napa that we will definitely be attending next year (alas, it is in March!) Back at the museum- they let you taste as many mustards as you can handle, so we tried about 10 and probably bought about 8 for ourselves and various people. We tasted the grand champion of this year’s festival- it was a whole grain mustard with truffles- it was AWESOME. You could definitely taste the truffles but it wasn’t overpowering either way. James really liked the blue cheese mustard, so we got a bottle of that, as well as a local Wisconsin mustard that I really liked. Overall, Mt. Horeb was a town that I could have spent some more time in. There were a few cool antique shops and several interesting-sounding pubs and shops- The town was really into Trolls. There was the Grumpy Troll Pub and the Trolls Landing gift store- not sure what that is about, we didn’t see any bridges… there was also “Dick’s Meats” that looked “interesting.”

We took the scenic route out and passed a cool house at 65 mph with metal sculptures in the front yard that I had to turn the car around for. There were lots of cows. James loves the cows…hence their feature in our video below...

After Wisconsin and crossing the Mississippi, we started across Minnesota to Sioux Falls, SD. It was a long, dry road and it was around 9 pm when we rolled up to the Victorian B&B in Sioux Falls. Our hostess was already pissed that we came in so late, but she was only mildly civil when we walked in and showed us around. I sensed a little bitchiness and her kids were a little weird, popping out from behind a curtain from the third floor but not talking (the little girl was like 7). There were dresses hanging on the walls that freaked James out and I tried to forget that there was a doll sitting on the dresser. James and I went out in search of food and found the only non-fast food restaurant open at 9:30 on a Monday night was a Mexican place whose name I forget. We ate in about 20 minutes and headed back to the B&B for a lukewarm bath in the big claw-foot tub.