The twilit drive to Silver Bay consists of 55 miles of lake-fringed road. It's magical. Flat-bottomed clouds above us look like the underbellies of boats, giving the impression of being at the bottom of a sea as well as next to one.

Day 3: Silver Bay to Montevideo, Minnesota (299 mi.)

Silver Bay, an iron-mining town, is as antithetical to groovy Grand Marais as you'd imagine. Nevertheless, at the Baptism River B&B, our innkeeper greets us with steaming coffee, cinnamon bread pudding, a GOT JESUS? T-shirt—and an electric tirade against, among other things, peak oil, recreational snowmobilers, and the war in Iraq. Soberly, we climb back into what, we are increasingly realizing, is an unquestionably sexy, fun, and fast car that we'd be patent hypocrites to consider fuel-efficient. The car, perhaps sensing our skepticism, retaliates by refusing to let the sunroof slide shut just as rain begins to close in. Our helpful Lexus roadside-assistance operator recommends, deadpan, that we tape some Hefty bags to the roof, so we hightail it to a gas station and blow through $40 worth of duct tape. Who's sexy, fun, and fast now?

Past Duluth, Route 23 takes a turn for the ugly ("Ooh, gelato!" "No, that says G&L Auto"), but after a few miles the gun emporiums and taxidermists dissolve into prairie—of a kind. The prairie here is different from Wisconsin's, which still involves vast patches of growing grass. In Minnesota, especially traveling west, the land has been thoroughly colonized by corn, soybeans, and, increasingly, ethanol plants, which require a hefty diet of government subsidies to bear fruit. The rain stops, so we strip off the feeble cantlets of plastic still taped to the car and sail onward. We veer south off Route 23 and make right angles around cornfields, following roads with names like 625th Street and 540th Avenue. The paths carved out by the rows of corn, now at shoulder height, have names too: 38H65, 37Y17, or sometimes just "Experimental." They form a textured, regimented sea, tassels glinting in the sun like whitecaps. Cargill has superseded the Good Witch of the North on the adopt-a-highway signs. The Midwest's desperate mining of its own resources may be what makes finding exceptions to the rule so special.

Blessedly, this monotonous ocean is spattered with deviant islands. Driving through Cosmos, we happen, at the intersection of West Astro Boulevard and North Milky Way, upon the town's annual Space Fest, and stop to observe road-trip rule No. 764: When you see a man on a crepe-paper bandstand play two trumpets at once, you pause for rhubarb pie. South of Sacred Heart, we discover the Rudi Memorial, a dovetailed log cabin built in 1868 that has been converted into a tiny unlocked museum, complete with a dusty guest book whose entries date back to 1954. In Montevideo, Andy Kahmann is busy printing posters on a century-old letterpress for the region's annual Arts Meander. At her knitting supply shop a few doors down, Donna Bevelhymer sits purling a sweater with yarn woven from her own flock's wool. It's comforting to know that these places exist. Devotion, competence, and goodwill all facilitate sustainability, whether economic or environmental.

Our last oasis amid the cornfields is the bed-and-bagel at Moonstone Farm, where Richard Handeen and Audrey Arner grow grass-finished beef on Richard's grandfather's homestead. They may not be corporate burnouts or youthful idealists, but Richard and Audrey, too, believe in giving the quotidian some consideration. We swim in the creek and use the garden hose as a shower. The dog pees on our silly, gorgeous car. Dinner comes from the field, garden, and neighboring farm. The stars come out, and—what do you know—they're way brighter out here than in New York City.