Home!

The Trek Across America 2010 was fantastic, but it's also great to be home. I've actually been back for several weeks. I was moving so fast at the end of the trip that I outran the blog and had to make the last several posts from home.

A few observations: I again enjoyed travelling across the country and seeing the varied landscapes and meeting people along the way. There's nothing quite like being in some incredible natural settings in your own mobile house. On the other hand, this trip moved a little too quickly. First of all, I had a deadline to meet in California at the Lazy Daze RV headquarters. This meant that I couldn't linger in any one place too long. I actually didn't spend more than one night in any one place until I had left California and was all the way up in Wyoming. I was moving several hundred miles each day - way too fast. And then, once I'd had the work done on the RV in California, I wanted to make sure I got back home before the birth of our first grandchild. (Mission accomplished there.)

Also, this was quite a hot summer. One reason I travelled across the north is that I thought it would be cooler there. Think again. It was hot pretty much everywhere I went except for up in the Rockies. In Michigan and Wisconsin (and most everywhere else) it was in the high 90s and very humid, and in southern California it was 107 on the day of my visit to the Lazy Daze factory. I skedaddled out of there as fast as I could. Thank goodness for generators and AC!

And finally, this was the last long trip I'll take alone. There are some great rewards to be had travelling by yourself, deep in your own thoughts, making on-the-spot decisions without compromise. But the downside is that it gets lonely. I'm fortunate to have a wonderful mate who loves to travel and who brings the additional bonus of getting actively excited about things. While I enjoy things more or less internally, I've many times over the years had the pleasure doubled (and tripled) by experiencing something through Tracey's eyes and heart. She's like having a set of "feelers" through which things are sensed with excitement, joy and jubilation.

I would have loved to hang around at many of the places I visited and that's exactly what Tracey and I will do next year when we hit the road. We'd like to do what many RVers do -- take at least one "rest" day in between travel days. Better yet, find a place that we'd like to explore and put down temporary roots for maybe a week or so.

But I do want to say that none of the "downsides" mentioned above negate the fact that I loved every minute of moving along the highways, seeing spectacular things, hiking wilderness trails, meeting interesting people, and feeling the "in the now" serenity that comes with getting away from familiar surroundings, routines, and obligations. And I was able to see a great many places that exemplify things that are uniquely American, which was one of my goals. Also, I've done a lot of "reconnaissance" for our future travels. I feel like I've paved the way for adventures yet to come.

Now here's a great reason to be back home ...


Sebastian Heng Blanton arrived at 5:21 p.m. on October 5, 2010. He was a very healthy 7 lbs., 13 oz. and measured 21 inches in length. His mom Malina and his dad Eric are ecstatic to be his parents. Grandma and Grandpa are pretty much over the moon.

Spammed!

Well, apparently there is a museum for everything. In Austin, Minnesota, I paid a visit to the Spam Museum, a tribute to the quintessential American mystery meat. It is housed at the world headquarters of Hormel Foods, which has been grinding up various porky parts and stuffing the result into blue cans since 1937.


While walking among the museum's exhibits, you learn that Hormel was founded back in 1891 when George Hormel opened a small butcher shop in Austin. But he had grand visions and the enterprise soon expanded beyond the small city in Minnesota, eventually becoming known worldwide. By 1937 George's son Jay was running things. It was Jay who came up with the canned meat concoction of ground pork shoulder mixed with ham and liberal dashes of salt and other spices. The word "Spam" (for "spiced ham") was the winning entry in a contest held to name the new product.

During World War II, cases of Spam were shipped by the thousands to U.S. troops in Europe and the Pacific. It was a popular item because the meat would stay fresh, or at least edible, without refrigeration. At times the soldiers ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My dad remembered it as "Spam What Am."


Some of the Spam sent to the South Pacific made its way to the native islanders who evidently found it much to their liking. Today, Spam is a favored food in that part of the world. In Hawaii, it's considered a delicacy. Hormel has made versions of Spam available there that can't be found elsewhere including Honey Spam, Spam with Bacon, and Hot and Spicy Spam.

Hormel has a long history of advertising and media sponsorship such as the early-40s "The Hormel Program," starring George Burns and Gracie Allen. Following the war, the company cemented Spam into the national psyche by sending "The Hormel Girls," a sixty-member all-female swing band, across the land singing and extolling Hormel products.



In 1970, a famed sketch on Britain's Monty Python show depicted a cafe where just about all the menu items featured Spam (Spam, eggs, bacon and Spam, for instance). A group of Vikings eating in the cafe would burst into song - "Spam, Spam, Spam, wonderful Spam" - in the midst of the other actors' dialog. You can see a video here. This apparently inspired pranksters during the budding years of the internet to disrupt online news groups by filling the screen with the word "Spam" repeatedly. Thus the word has taken on the meaning of anything - bulk email, for instance - that disrupts normal internet usage.

See what all you can learn in a museum? Alas, they weren't giving out free samples of Spam. They were selling it in the gift shop, but I passed up on the offer.

One more thing about Spam, as if this weren't already too much. There's a website for Spam haiku, the seventeen-syllable Japanese verse form. Some examples:

Tastes like ham, sorta
But clogs up my aorta
Pig rigor morta.

The grim sucking sound
Of the SPAM shucking its skin,
Its hard blue cocoon.

Spock scans the pink meat.
"It's life, Jim," he tells Kirk, "but...
not as we know it."