Day 3: Chicago to Worthington

Evan: So we headed out from my cousin's house and grabbed breakfast at a local deli. It was really good, and from there we hit the road. We didn't expect to see a lot between Chicago and Worthington, and didn't expect a whole lot from Worthington. And for the most part our suspicions were confirmed. Illinois and Wisconsin are pretty boring, at least along I-90; a few rolling hills and lots of farms, but not a whole lot in the way of sights to see. To avoid fast food and Subway, we stopped in a town about 4 hours outside Chicago called Tomah. We didn't expect most, but we'd hoped we could at least find a diner or something. We found the Tee Pee Supper Club, but avoided it in favor of Greenwood Cafe (we think--we're going back to Google to find out the place, we can't remember the name.) It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone's name--except nobody knew ours. But the food was good; I had a tuna melt, Sarah grabbed a turkey sandwich. We shared potato cheese soup, which was disappointingly not great for being in Wisconsin. With fuller bellies, we headed on to Minnesota.

Sarah:
I couldn't remember what we did after that, so Evan reminded me that after Tomah we "drove. and drove and drove and drove." Which is true. We drove for hours past fields of nothing, flooded fields, fields dotted with cows, and fields with wind power. So mostly fields. After about another four or so hours, we passed by some pretty interesting town names, including Welcome and Blue Earth. I asked Evan to find out what was in Blue Earth, and we learned that it was home to the Jolly Green Giant. After learning that it was a sixty foot tall statue, we took a detour and found the Giant. We took plenty of pictures, one of which I'll include for your entertainment:



I was absolutely giddy. Blue Earth's pride and joy was a giant statue of a giant, on a field that was awkwardly situated in a parking lot shared by a Wendy's or Dairy Queen.

Then, we finally made it to Worthington, whose motto is "You'll come to love us," which is great. We made it to the hotel, which is also fine enough and newer than our last Days Inn. Then we had to eat dinner.. which is thus far, my favorite part of the trip. I'll let Evan tell you about it...

Evan:

So we were pretty skeptical of Worthington and its motto. We looked up "Restaurants in Worthington" and found this place called Queen Sheba. After lots of Googling, we found out that it was Ethiopian. One review existed on Google, and it said that it was pretty good. So we figured we'd give it a shot, because if it was awful and we got food poisoning we'd only lose a night--and it definitely beat burgers or pizza if it was even half-decent. So we drove over after dropping our bags, and it was a hole in the wall. I mean, literally. The entrance was recessed from the road so we couldn't see it on our first pass up the street, and had a lot of trouble finding it on the second pass. But we made it in.

And it was basically empty. There were three groups of people in there. Some Ethiopians who probably owned the place or knew the owners, a pair of locals drinking Corona, and us. We ordered off a two-page menu that was in broken English and waited for a half hour. The restaurant itself was in a converted hotel, so the building was beautiful--or used to be. The ceiling was incredibly intricate, it had a beautiful chandelier--the place was probably the pride of Worthington in, like, 1920. But it's 2011, and it's fallen pretty far. Anyway, the food came out after a while. I got mutton, Sarah got a dish that can be best described as tabouleh, but with cheese instead of tomatoes. And both dishes were mind-blowingly good. Ethiopian food is served with sponge bread, and both our dishes were served with a LOT of sponge bread. And the food itself was incredible. Both dishes were unbelievably flavorful. Sarah's, especially, was totally different from anything either of us had ever tasted before; mint and cheese and tons of other flavors layered together in subtle, complex ways. The mutton I had was incredibly fresh and the sauce it came with was outstanding. I'll pass it to Sarah to tell a final, cute anecdote to end the evening:

So the time came to pay and I went up to the front to ask for the bill. Which they clearly didn't really do, so she just sort of estimated and added in her head and said "Twenty dollars?" I happily handed her a twenty dollar bill, and a tip. She was extremely nice and even asked where we were from (obviously we stood out as non-Worthingtonians). I told her that we were roadtripping. She asked if I had family here, and I told her that we were just stopping for the night because we were tired of driving. Then she said she had just made some chicken and rice and it would be good for twenty four hours, if we wanted her to wrap us up some so we would have food on our trip. It was so thoughtful and cute, and we thanked her but politely declined because we were so full from the delicious meal. And that was it. We left Queen Sheba amazed by the experience and waistbands tighter, and headed back to the hotel where we are right now.. I guess that's all I have to say for tonight...

Hopefully we have some more great experiences tomorrow!

-Evan and Sarah