Minnesota Bluff Country - Day 3

This morning we had a step-on guide for a city tour of Rochester. It was his 39th birthday, so we sang to him and gave him a small cake with a birthday candle. He thanked us and put it on the front seat. Unfortunately, at one point he decided to sit down. On the cake! None the less, our tour of Rochester took us from the top of Assissi Heights into the core of downtown with the huge Mayo Clinic complex. Mayo is now the largest private employer in Minnesota. We drove around the Pill Hill district, stopping at a home that one of the Mayo brothers had built. We also stopped to see the Plummer House. But we had to move along in order to be at Mayowood for our tour of this beautiful home, lived in by three generations of the Mayo family.

Our next stop in Rochester was at a toaster collection at a private home. On this 43 1/2 acres, they have built a shed with the sign reading, Toasters R Us! Having paid $18 for a toaster and later finding it was worth $500, the collecting fever began. Today they have about a thousand toasters, from the simplest forks to hold bread over a fire to a collection of old Toastmasters. And all of the toasters work.

After lunch in Mantorville at the historic Hubbell House, we headed home through flat fields of corn and soybeans. Definitely a major change from our days spent in Minnesota Bluff Country.