Corn Fed

It’s fair to say, we’ve not gone short of a calorie or two (thousand) on this visit to the US. Most of them have been entirely delicious* and I don’t (currently) regret any of them for an instant but, having done a fair bit of driving and sitting in the last few days, there haven’t been too many opportunities to compensate for all the eating. Today was our last full day, and the forecast was to be fine, so we took the chance burn off some of the surplus if we could, starting with a bike ride with a view of wild turkeys (I’m stupidly excited about wild turkeys although apparently they’re quite common in these parts)…

And a last chance to enjoy one of the many thousands of lakes.

We then headed up to Stillwater for lunch which is historic (= has actual streets with shops on them)

And has a converted grain elevator, which is actually pretty cool

Most importantly, and not to be outdone by Iowa, it has an impressive bridge, and although this one is mostly for cars, they let people use it too.

As you can undoubtedly see, it’s an “extradosed” bridge – a hybrid of a cable-stayed and segmental box bridge structure.**

Obviously we had to give it a go, especially when we realised we were effectively walking to Wisconsin (I think this is probably the first time I’ve ever crossed a state line on foot although I have walked across an international border that’s getting more contentious by the minute while the other half has walked across an ex-international border that now no longer exists, back in the days when it was the other side putting walls up, not us).

All told it was about a mile there and a mile back – quite long enough to walk on a hot afternoon, although there will soon be a nice circular bike trail once the historic lift bridge is back in action. Just enough to burn off a healthy lunch, with calories to spare to cycle down to the local farmers’ market in Shoreview and buy some more food and rack them all up again and then some.

Back to Blighty tomorrow, if we are spared, with, undoubtedly, enough fat reserves to survive the most disastrous of Brexits.

* And can I just say that of all the delicious calories we’ve had on this trip, the sweetcorn (50c per cob at the farmers’ market) has probably been the chief revelation. If you’ve been buying sad little shorn cobs wrapped in clingfilm in British supermarkets you have no idea what you’re missing.

** according to the helpful information sign along the way