21 A Wrong Turn

Chapter 21 A Wrong Turn Now the twins were furious. The house on the rock! Coke ripped the sheet of paper out of the pad, crumpled it up into a ball, and tossed it in the trash can next to the picnic table. "What is this with a house on a rock?" he sputtered. "If they want us to go to this stupid house so badly, why don't they tell us where it is? Oh no, that would make too much sense!" "And today is June twenty-third," Pep said, checking the date on the cell phone. "We only have two days to get there." The sound of wheels on gravel made the twins look up and see the family's RV pulling into the parking lot. It was hard to believe three hours had gone by. Pep slipped her pad back into her

backpack so her parents wouldn't see it. "What have you kids been doing?" Dr. McDonald said cheerfully as he hopped out of the driver's seat. The movie must have been a comedy, the twins figured. Any anger their parents felt before they left was gone. "Nothing exciting," Coke replied. "Played Frisbee mostly." Their parents sat down at the picnic table with leftovers they had brought back from dinner, and gave the food to the kids. They said they had done some thinking about the rest of the trip. Aunt Judy's wedding would be in Washington on July Fourth, so they had eleven days to drive 1,167 miles. Mrs. McDonald felt there was plenty of time to stop off at interesting spots along the way and gather information for Amazing but True. She pulled a Minnesota guidebook out of her purse.

They were an hour and a half from Minneapolis, she told them. With that as a starting point, they could check out the Mall of America. It was one of the biggest malls in the world, and it was right nearby. In Belle Plaine, there was a two-story outhouse that attracts a lot of tourists. But that would be an hour out of the way, a long way to go to see a toilet. In Rothsay, Minnesota, there was a ninethousand- pound statue of a chicken. And in Frazee, there was the world's largest turkey. In a town called Virginia, they had a giant floating statue of the Minnesota state bird: the loon. But it was more than three hours north. And the Sandpaper Museum, in Two Harbors, Minnesota, was almost as far. Even Mrs. McDonald had second thoughts about driving three hours to look at sandpaper. If they were going to go that far north, they might as well drive a little farther to Hibbing, which was the home of the world's largest open pit iron ore mine and also the boyhood home of Bob Dylan.

"I could spend a month just in Minnesota," Mrs. McDonald said wistfully. "No wonder the state bird is a loon," Coke remarked. Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/). Click Get Directions. In the A box, type Darwin MN. In the B box, type Minneapolis MN. Click Get Directions. "Anything in your guidebook about houses on rocks?" Coke asked. "No," his mother replied. "Why?" "Just wondering." There was no way for the twins to find where the mysterious house on the rock was located. They would just have to wait and hope they received another cipher. In the end, Mrs. McDonald decided to visit just one location in Minneapolis: the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. Mrs. McDonald read out loud from her

guidebook and described this amazing museum that collected two hundred fifty weird contraptions that supposedly used electricity, radio waves, magnets, or vibrations to cure everything from arthritis to acne. A century ago, apparently, bogus scientists spent a lot of time dreaming up fraudulent devices such as the Bio- Electric Shield, the Dynameter, and Boyd's Battery, which hung around the neck to ward off the earth's magnetic rays. The Rejuvenator reversed the aging process. The Spectro-Chrome used six colored lights to cure six different diseases if you sat in front of it with no clothes on. The Psychograph was a bowl-shaped sensor that you put on your head to measure the bumps to determine your personality traits. "Anybody who used one of those things should have his head examined," Coke remarked. The next morning, June twenty-fourth, the McDonalds headed for St. Paul. The address for

The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, interestingly, turned out to be the same as for the Science Museum of Minnesota. "Excuse me," Mrs. McDonald asked a lady at the information desk, "where is The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices?" "I'm very sorry," the lady replied, "but that museum is closed." "Well, when does it open?" "Uh, never," the lady said. "It closed a few years ago." "What do you mean it's closed?" Mrs. McDonald put her hands on her hips, and her voice rose. "Calm down, Bridge," Dr. McDonald said. "I'm very sorry," the lady behind the desk said. "But that museum no longer exists." "Do you know who I am?" Mrs. McDonald shouted. "I run a very popular website called Amazing but True. Maybe you've heard of it?" "Mom," Pep said. "No, I haven't heard of your website," the lady