Day 10: World's Third Largest

It's been two days since I last had a wireless connection for my computer yet so much has happened. Up until I hit Minnesota I had 2 nights and a day in each place I hit. From here until Toronto on the 13th I only have a night and half a day in each stop, so I've had to choose more selectively what to see. I'm choosing to spend my morning in Madison catching you all up on what's be going on, mostly so I don't forget ,but also so that I have a record of it when I want to look back years from now. By the way, I would like to really thank everyone for their encouraging comments. It's been great reading your replies and and getting your messages. This trip has really been fantastic and I'm so glad that I have this forum to reflect on how special it all is. I feel very blessed to have the ability to do this. Are any of you having a hard time following the order of the trip, and if so, does it matter? I liked blogabond because of the may they provide of the trip, but I'm finding the order things get listed awkward. I'm not sure what to do about it, but I think I'm going to list the day on each entry and see f that helps. Let me know.

Now on to my trip through Minnesota.

One of my favorite resources for this trip has been the website www.roadsideamerica.com They offer up many of the oddball and interesting places I've seen or visited. I had been looking for "The World's Largest......." sorts of things, but it wasn't until my sister forwarded me the link to Minnesota that I came upon

For my money, I think the more qualifiers a town places on their roadside attraction the better. This is an 8' tall ball of twine rolled by the son of a former Senator from the county. The ball itself wasn't rolled in Darwin, but in the county and Darwin was willing to put up the money to build the glassed in gazebo it currently lives in. The glare from the glass was really bad, but here's the best shot if it I could get.

There are two larger balls of twine in the US, but they were either machine rolled, or group rolled. The really funny thing is that neither of the other balls live in the tows that they were rolled in either. One is clear across several states in fact. I love that a town can buy its way to kitchy glory. My favorite self portrait of the day is my reflection in the glass.

Day 10: World's Third Largest

Darwin, United States