Baked beans and jazz hands! Probably great together and totally not a volatile mix! What’s the worst that could happen?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

…though nearly every trip ends with return drives through states we’ve visited plenty of times. And yet, our neighboring states rarely run out of new misadventures, often involving foods and their manufacturing processes.

We’ve braked for beans before, including the Jelly Belly factory tour on our 2006 drive through Wisconsin and that time we saw real cacao beans in the South Bend Chocolate Company‘s delightfully fragrant backrooms in 2016. Sometimes beans are serious business and sometimes they’re comedy gold, depending on the context. Down in Tennessee we found a bit of both in the affable visitor center of another bean empire.

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