Bougiegrnk's Travels: Winona

Colectiva was parked at Prairie Island Campground, which is part of the Winona City Park system. Because of that, it was only about 3 miles or so from the Downtown Historic District, which was easily biked many times during our stay. We drove all over the Historic District many times, taking in all the 1800’s era buildings. The original Winona City Hall was built in 1885, and now houses many of the city’s service departments.

On our way into downtown we got to ride on a portion of the Mississippi River Trail. The MRT is a bicycle byway that runs from the headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake Itasca about 3,000 miles down to the Gulf of Mexico. While some of the sections are a bit busy – in this area, most of the sections run along US Highway 61, a four lane divided high speed highway – so may not be that much fun to ride. But some of the sections are on quiet rural roads, or are even paved paths.

In our campground was a guy who was tenting, and only had a bike with him. It turns out he had left Itasca in June after he was sure the harsh winter weather would have passed. He still had a long way to go to get to the Gulf, but he was bound and determined to get there.

On one of our trips downtown we stopped at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. Much of their collection focused on art with a marine theme – either ships or fishing towns or the like – mostly painted by artists in the last half of the 1800’s. But they also had a nice collection of masterpieces. Imagine walking into a small art museum in Winona Minnesota to see art by Van Gough, Matisse, Rembrandt, Picasso, Homer Winslow, Gaugin, Monet – we were stunned and really had a great time here.

It turns out that almost none of the art on display here is owned by the museum. It makes sense if you think about it (but you wouldn’t think about it without this stimulus), but there is much more really good historic art out there than there is space to display it. The philanthropists of Winona didn’t have to pony up all the money needed to buy a bunch of masterpiece art – they just had to pony up enough money to build a state of the art building with climate controlled galleries which could be locked up at night using bank caliber vault doors. Since most art museums or collectors don’t have sufficient space to display, most of their collections are in storage, which costs money. So, if you can provide a safe and protective environment to display their art, they will gladly put it on loan to you, in many cases on essentially a permanent basis. The philanthropists in Winona are pretty smart dudes!

Just North of Winona is the Lark Toy Company. Apparently Lark has been in business here since the late 1800’s making classic wooden toys from the abundant pine forests of the area. Their factory here has an extensive toy store, a toy museum, and a bunch of amusements to the point it almost felt like an amusement park. The whimsical carousel inside the museum area makes it worth the visit alone.

Real estate on the Mississippi River goes for big bucks. As is happening in larger cities, the cost of the land is resulting in developers resorting to condominiums to make the views affordable. These condo’s must cost their inhabitants a bunch!

We visited the Watkins Company factory in the heart of downtown Winona. Watkins was founded in the 1890’s – they said they didn’t sell Snake Oil, but that is what their early ads looked like. They made lotions and liniments and sold them exclusively through direct sale – essentially door to door salesmen. By 1931, Watkins was so successful at what they did that they were the largest direct sale manufacturing company in the world.

The company has survived until 2015 by reinventing itself several times. Unlike the early 1900’s, today their sales are 85% through established retail stores that display and sell their product. Their sole factory is still in Winona, along with a museum and company store that sells their entire line of products. We had fun walking around the museum and seeing all the old materials which brought back visions of an earlier, simpler time. It turns out that our next crockpot of chili, our next dinner of tacos and the Woman’s next batch of cookies are all on Watkins. Before we left the company store we bought seasoning packets for chili and tacos, and a bottle of their original double vanilla, made exclusively from Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Beans – no Mexican or Guatemalan vanilla beans for this luxury product.