The SPAM Museum, 101 3rd Avenue, Austin, Minnesota ~ 2023

Driving near Austin made this museum a must-stop 😊

It first opened as Hormel Foods First Century Museum in January 1991 in Austin's Oak Park Mall. It was later rebranded as the Spam Museum and a larger one opened in September 2001-2014. In April of 2016, the museum opened in its current space in downtown Austin. 

It was a blast, especially the spam can train running at the ceiling level throughout the entire place.

The train runs through the gift shop as well.

On the 75th anniversary of the Hormel Company, Dwight Eisenhower wrote a letter to the company with his congratulations and his thanks for all of the spam he and the GIs in World War II ate.

This was 14,000 square feet of fun and we took some souvenirs home for ourselves and our friends.

There's a bronze statue in front of the museum of a farmer with two pigs, reflecting Hormel's history as a pork producer and the originations of SPAM. Cheers to SPAM!

Roswell, New Mexico ~ Aliens, UFOs, Nature Preserve, POW Iron Cross, and Robert Goddard

Made famous by the 1947 alleged alien space ship crash, the town is now a complete alien tourist haven. Most downtown businesses have an alien of some kind out in front and McDonalds has gone all out 😊

The UFO Museum covers many UFO stories, not just the 1947 crash, and also has a lot of alien movie posters and information.

We found this guy in his souvenir t-shirt later on at Saguaro National Park in Tucson 😀

It was a fun visit but a quick one. There was a wildlife refuge a few miles away (4200 E. Pine Lodge Road) and we took the loop ride for a complete change of pace. Established in 1937, the refuge is over 24,000 acres and is an oasis in the desert. And it is gorgeous.

A random piece of history from World War II can be seen at 910 N. Pennsylvania Avenue in Roswell. During the war, about 4800 German prisoners were held in a POW camp just outside of town. A group of men working on a flood control project secretly arranged rocks on the river bank to form the Iron Cross. When it was discovered, the town covered it with cement. Erosion later exposed it and now the site has been turned into a memorial to POWs everywhere.

Our last Roswell stop was Goddard Corner, 1011 N. Richardson Avenue, near the Goddard Planetarium (now closed). Robert Goddard is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion and did his research here in Roswell from 1930-1942.

Goodbye, Roswell!