My seventh day began under the influence of the same lumpy mattress and same deafening air conditioner I had endured the night before. Not for long, though: I checked out as fast as I could. While on the way, I found a sign on the premises that appeared to have the words "Quality Inn" covered over by tape, reflective of a franchise change. Quality, it wasn't...but it wasn't quite the Budget Host of nightmares, either.
For lack of anything better to do, I wandered to the Crossroads Center mall. It wasn't quite ten o'clock; so while the interior corridor was open, the stores weren't. Were there any interesting relics to be found of retailers past? Yes, in the singular: The south anchor was a two-story JCPenney store that was disturbingly similar to the one at Dixie Square...right down to the vertical channels in the facade. There wasn't much else, though: The mall reportedly opened in 1966, but it had been expanded and renovated so severely and so often over the years that nothing else even the slightest bit original remained. The interior did feature a loop-shaped corridor that left about a third of the stores "mall-locked" in the middle, which was a bit unusual.
More roadside artifacts in and around St. Cloud: A vaguely Bavarian-styled service garage with a pegasus indicating a past existence as a Mobil station. Surprisingly, the business has its own website with a history page, which notes the construction year as 1927.
Moments later on U.S. 10, I stumbled upon a barn-style Dairy Queen with a 1960s mascot statue on the roof...worth a few points in rarity, if nothing else. (The picture also turned out as proof that my digital camera is brimming with dust, as splotches appear on any frame taken with the optical zoom on a sunny day.)
Sadly, I scarcely got to see any more of Minneapolis and St. Paul on the last day of the trip than I did at the beginning. After realizing that half the day was gone and I hadn't even gotten out of Minnesota's 6th congressional district yet, I drove...and drove, and drove, and drove, until all traces of traffic congestion and city life were left behind. I didn't catch a break until I was in Winona, where I got a bite to eat (promptly discovering both a price error on the menu board and a cent from 1930 in my change) and wound up with one more JCPenney picture for my collection...this time in the form of a bizarre construct split with a Fastenel industrial warehouse at the other end and a whole lot of nothing in the middle. Evidently an Econo Foods supermarket was housed here until 2005, but I really wonder what the full story behind this place was.
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