Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Twin Cities
After picking up our Winnebago from the factory service department on Friday afternoon, Carol and I drove to Minneapolis, parked the RV, and headed for the Mall of America (MOA). The MOA is the world’s largest mall and the largest indoor amusement park. The mall has three main levels (the fourth partial level is a multi-screen theater and Hooters), each with an inside perimeter of about 6/10 of a mile. We spent about 2-1/2 hours touring the mall before having dinner in the mall at Tony Roma’s. Except for one other reasonably priced restaurant, all of the eating places in the mall were either fast food or a little on the pricy side.
The amusement park features a Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, flume ride, a couple of roller coasters, several other adult rides, and a handful of kiddie rides. The most unusual (pictured below) is a roller coaster with cars that spin much like the teacups at Disneyworld.
Unusual roller coaster
Usual Ferris Wheel
Rick and Castle of Spam Cans
The new Harry Potter novel was to be released at midnight on Friday, and by 9:00 p.m. people were already beginning to gather for the festivities at Barnes and Noble. We learned the next day that over 6,000 presold books were delivered Friday night.
The mall is air conditioned in the summer, but has no heating system for the winter – it is warmed by body heat, lights, cash registers, and other electrical equipment.
We returned to MOA on Saturday morning and met up about noon with the rest of our Minnesota group, who had departed Forest City earlier that morning. We ate lunch as a group in a nice, reasonably priced café in IKEA, then spent a couple of hours touring that large store. It looks like a great place for young married couples to shop to furnish their homes and apartments.
Our campground for the next four nights is Bunker Hill RV Park, located in a nice county park in a north Minneapolis suburb. The county park also includes a golf course, equestrian center, and water park. We had dinner as a group Saturday evening in the golf club restaurant.
On Sunday our “host” from Minneapolis gave us a tour of the Mississippi River waterfront. We then took a backstage tour of the Guthrie Theater. This is a large, modern theater that anchors a theater community (over 100 theaters) that is second only to New York and Chicago. The building is an architectural showplace and features a “bridge to infinity,” an enclosed cantilevered walkway that offers good views of the Mississippi River. After lunch, we toured the Mill Ruins Museum, housed in an old mill building that in the mid-1850s was the largest flour mill in the world for three months, until a larger Pillsbury mill (which held the world record for about 50 years) was completed just across the river. The mill, which was owned by one of the four companies that later combined to become General Mills, burned twice, once in the 1920s and again in 1991 (after it had been vacant for some 25 years).
Part of our Group
View of Part of Mill Ruin
On Monday, we returned to the riverfront to eat at Kranarczak’s, an ethnic European restaurant, and to take a cruise on the Mississippi on a small riverboat. The cruise gave us a good view of the city skyline, and took us through the northernmost (and deepest) of the 29 locks on the upper Mississippi River – a 50 foot drop in a lock that discharges 8 million gallons of water in about 10 minutes. The lock is adjacent to St. Anthony Falls, the largest waterfall on the Mississippi. The falls formerly powered the riverside flour mills and today runs a hydroelectric power plant. Along this stretch of the river there are a couple of unusually shaped transmission towers (pictured below), which have been designed to provide a softer look than the normal towers.
Paddleboat
Tower Style 1
Tower Style 2
St. Anthony Falls
Monday evening was a pot luck dinner at the home of Joe Lapinski – the fellow who has organized our Minnesota trek. He invited a friend of his who is a history buff to give us a brief talk on the Minnesota Indian uprising of 1862.
On Tuesday, about half of our group toured the Science Museum in St. Paul. In addition to three levels of hands-on exhibits, we saw an Omnivision movie on ancient Greece and a special exhibit on Pompeii. It is amazing how well preserved the Pompeian artifacts are, including pottery, jewelry, carbonized food, and walls with fresco paintings. Later in the day, Carol and I visited Ft. Snelling, a fort which dates from the early 1800s and lies where the Minnesota River joins the Mississippi. Dred Scott, of U.S. Supreme Court opinion fame, lived at the fort for a period of time.
Science Museum
Ft. Snelling
Ft. Snelling
On Wednesday, we moved the RVs north about 60 miles to the Grand Casino RV Resort adjacent to the Grand Casino in Hinkley, Minnesota. En route we stopped at a small local winery and sampled red, white and fruit wines – and, of course, bought a couple of bottles. This was followed by a quick stop at an outlet mall before reaching our final destination. In the early evening we played the slots and enjoyed a buffet dinner in one of the casino’s eateries. Tomorrow is a “free day” in Hinkley, Carol and I will probably shop, sight-see and revisit the casino.
Assuming good internet access, the next update will be in 4-5 days, after we have visited Duluth.
