The Road Trip West and South...

We were on our way home from north central Wisconsin and were on the last leg of our nearly one week vacation. Having spent the night in Austin, MN in the southeast corner of the state, we got on the road early and headed due west on I-90 and arrived at the home of my new friend Mark after a couple of hours. His town was nice looking and he lived near a big lake. I took some photos of his nice yard as we drove into his place.

We were there to buy a couple of engines but Mark gave us a tour of his suburban acreage where he runs his landscape business. He had a nice shop and equipment too. Here is our host in front of this old Chevy fire truck cab. 

Mark buys and trades for alot of old farm truck in his neighborhood and then resells the parts he don't need to others who can use them. He saves alot of things from being crushed so folks restoring old trucks can repair the ones they own. We had fun looking around his place.

Several of the big trucks still run and he has a good looking pickup he is restoring when time allows inside his shop that he has owned since he was a young kid.

And he had a pretty nice hot rod roadster that his wife likes to drive with her friends to Dairy Queen for ice cream.

He had some nice Allis Chalmers, Kubota, and a restored Fordson but they were hard to get a good photos of inside the shed. I did like this unrestored Fordson used for yard art near a silo near his shop area.

And speaking of tractors I was in love with this Farmall converted to Ford Model A car engine. It was awesome and home built by using farmer engineering. I even climbed aboard for a photo opp myself.

Everywhere we looked at his place was interesting with spare parts for trucks, tractors and several semi trailers for storage as well. 

And inside his shop was this cute little dozer he bought for his 6 year old grandson to learn how to work and drive on. He lets him push a pile of dirt around and said he can spend hours on this slow and safe moving machine. I think he is smart to be training a new helper to take over the workload when he gets older. That is one lucky kid...

He also had two late model Indian motorcycles and we looked at this one with marbleized custom paint.

And then we went inside his home to look at this huge 1800's ornate bar that he had purchased in his town. To say it was amazing is an understatement and we loved it.

His wife and daughter were busy cooking in the kitchen for later in the day on this busy Saturday morning and told us hello.

Then we went to this backyard pool area to inspect an old wooden 1800's railroad baggage mail car and it looked very cool. For now he uses it for lawn storage but it has much potential when gets time to do more restoration on it.

Then we looked at a cool 1940 Chevy truck and I took this photo of my favorite brother in law Lawrence who was my traveling companion on this whole trip. He loves trucks like this and owns several himself.

And then it was time to load the engines we bought and Mark got right on that job and fast...

At this time Mark asked us to follow him about 5-6 miles to a small town car show and that is what we did. Heck we were only 600 miles from home on a Saturday....why not?

and we took a walk around to see what was going on...

and then Mark introduced us to Hamb member 

Alan O aka Alan Oberlah who is running for Senate in Minnesota this fall and his beautiful wife and we looked at the Cadillac Coupe Deville they had brought to the show. Alan is mayor of nearby Worthington, MN which is a much bigger town that Rushmore where this show was held and also owns a busy body and paint shop.

I later spotted Alan O talking to this young war veteran who was taking an interest in the cars. No doubt a local small town hero who has adapted himself to the reality of life after war injuries. 

It is men like him and so many others that keep the rest of us free so we can pursue a life of liberty and freedom to do just what I was doing on this very road trip. And that was something to think about.

At this time, we got back on the 4 lane and headed for the long trip home. Stay tuned for the next installment soon.

Thank you Mark for being a great host. We had fun.