West Trip Day 21: The Drive home

Sunday, July 4

"Hey, hey, easy kids. Everybody in the car. Boat leaves in two minutes... or perhaps you don't want to see the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only four short hours away?"

-Clark Griswold

You would think there wouldn't be much to say about our 11 hour drive home. However, as it turned out, we had one last adventure in store. If you have read about our other drives you know that with a few exceptions (The Corn Palace and the giant Prairie Dog) we have skipped the cheesy roadside attractions such as the world's largest crow, bison, cow, pumpkin, green giant, etc... However, Rogan is a big fan of the Guinness Book of World Records. When we were in Hawaii, Rogan loved going through the World's Largest Maze at the Dole Plantation. We had an opportunity to see another largest in the world attraction on our journey home.

We had heard people talking about the World's Largest Ball of Twine that was just off the highway on the way home to Ohio. Now, Rogan was a little cynical at the assertion that the largest ball of twine was in Minnesota because he had done a state report on Kansas in 4th grade and learned they Cawker, Kansas claimed the largest ball of twine.

If you're not interested in the history of the largest ball of twine, then feel free to skip this paragraph, but actually its pretty interesting. It seems that two men, one in Minnesota and one in Kansas, were independently collecting a ball of twine as a personal passion.

From Wikipedia: "

Darwin, Minnesota is the home of a ball by Francis A. Johnson. It is 3 meters (12 ft) in diameter and weighs 4,900 kg (10,400 lbs). He started his obsession in March 1950 and wrapped four hours every day for 230 weeks. It is currently housed in a specially made gazebo across from the town park on Main Street.

Another ball was started in Cawker City, Kansas by Frank Stoeber. He saw Johnson's ball as a challenge and started his own. Stoeber had 1.6 million feet (490,000 m) of twine on his 11-foot diameter ball (3.4 m) when he died in 1974. Cawker City built an open-air gazebo over Stoeber's ball where every August a "Twine-a-thon" is held and more twine is added to the ball. As of 2006, the twine ball has reached 17,886 pounds (8,111 kg), a circumference of 40 feet (12 m), and a length of 7,801,766 feet (2,377,978 m). At a length of over 1,475 miles, it would reach as far as Boston, the Bahamas, Cuba, Mexico City, Vancouver, Hudson Bay, or Canada's Northwest Territories from Cawker City if it were unwound.

So there you have it, the Cawker, Kansas twine ball is currently the world's largest and heaviest ball of sisal twine while the Darwin, MN twine ball is the largest ball is the largest made by one person. I won't even get into controversies about balls of twine in other places made of other materials other than sisal, whatever that is. Nonetheless, Weird Al seems to give credit to the Darwin, MN effort as the greatest of all time.

That being said, we had to go see this thing. As we headed down Interstate 12 we came to the sign of the tiny town of Darwin, MN with a sign below that read "Twine Museum." Unfortunately, we blew right by Main Street as there was no sign and before we knew it, we were out of Darwin. I asked Jen to put the twine ball in the GPS so we wouldn't miss it again. We u-turned and headed back to Main St., but unfortunately it was a no left turn so we needed to pull a u-turn again.

I was aggravated that we had wasted time trying to find the largest ball of twine, but at this point it had become a quest, a quest for fun you might say. I looked ahead and saw a blacktopped driveway for what looked like a trucking company or something that had plenty of room for me to u-turn the camper. As I pulled in Jen advised me to take a right and take different simpler route, but I was sure I knew an easier way. I believed I had room to turn it around right there in the driveway. As I began turning I knew immediately we were in trouble. What had looked like a smooth blacktop from a distance was actually very dark, smooth mud. As the tires spun in the mud and we stopped moving forward, Jen beagan to panic. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" "Stay calm," I said heroically. "Let me try to back it up." The wheels of the pop up stuck firmly, and it began to jackknife instead.

"Oh, crap!" Now, I was worried. I stepped outside to survey the situation myself and immediately sank

down

an inch into thick mud. It had rained hard overnight and this was leftover dirt from a large pile that was stacked in the driveway. I decided that instead of trying to pull the camper while turning that I would try to pull it straight forward around the large pile of dirt where there was some grass and potential for traction.

"Here we go," I announced nervously as I hit the gas. The speedometer read about 40 mph, but we were only moving about 2 mph. But, we were moving. Mud was flying all around us in all directions. Clumps of mud landed on the windshield, on the top of the pop-up, and all over the sides of the van. When I reached the grass, I knew we were home free. I pulled the van to the edge of the driveway and breathed a sigh of relief. Jen hopped out and capture some pictures of our near disaster.

The top of the camper.

Where we were nearly stranded in mud.

Looks like plenty of room to turn around, right?

Meanwhile, I knocked the mud out of my shoes.

After all this, we were even more determined to see the largest ball of twine (made by 1 man). As we pulled out into the road, the van and camper clumpity-clumped and left a trail of mud for about half a mile. We finally arrived at our destination:

Ta-da!

Wasn't that worth it, kids?

After all that excitement, the other 10 and half hours of driving were pretty boring. We made it home about 8:30 that night. As much fun as we had on this trip, I have to say, it was great to be home.

Quest for Fun

Warning: Uses Profanity