This is in the middle of the shopping mall ... this place is big!
I don't remember that guy from the movie
The Mississippi (from the Minneapolis side)
Never heard of it. This sign is probably like the Citgo sign in Boston -- it'll never go away.
So we left Topeka at 9am or so, headed to MN via Kansas City. We looked up some of the places to stop along the way, and the Hallmark Visitors Center in Kansas City was our first stop. It was actually pretty cool. There was even an employee there in a little glass booth making cutting dies (card outlines is what he was making, but he showed us some examples of jigsaw puzzle dies as well). You can see a picture of Mark there on yesterday's page.
We continued North, and except for a couple of stops to eat, switch drivers, etc, we headed straight for the Twin Cities, pulling into the campground (the St. Paul East KOA, on I-94 east of the cities) at about sunset. Got hooked up, unloaded the BMW, and headed out to see what we could find for dinner (I kind of wanted to eat in, but since there were two of us, Mark convinced me that it would be fun to try a local restaurant). I actually had a really bad headache (must be from the latitude) but a little food got rid of that right away.
We headed back to the campsite, hung out for a little while just talking (mostly about Nationals -- me about how I sucked and Mark about how he didn't -- guess I deserve it after so many years were the other way around), and went to bed.
We awoke at 4:30am to the loudest rain storm I can remember. Of course, it was really only so loud because the roof of the motorhome doesn't do a very good job of damping out the sound of *really big* raindrops. It was so loud that I assumed it was hail, but in retrospect it was apparently just some major rain. I got up to make sure that there weren't any major leaks (there weren't, not even minor ones), and Mark and I had to shout to each other over the din. Lots of lightning and thunder too. But I somehow fell back to sleep.
This morning when we got up, it was still raining, but quietly -- we could have a normal conversation without shouting :-) The plan was to head out to see the cities, and to go to the Mall Of America. The brochures sure made it seem huge. The mall opens at 11am on Sundays, and after breakfast and everything, we were there at about 11:15.
It was huge. Wow. We walked around for a little while, checking out some interesting stores (game/puzzle stores, racing stores, miscellaneous paraphernalia stores ...) and then decided to check out this Nascar Racing simulation thing (Silicon Speedway). To do that, we needed to go clear to the other side of the mall, so we cut through the middle. In the middle (the mall is a big rectangle). In the middle is a big amusement park! Roller Coaster and everything. Just so we could say we've done it, we rode the roller coaster. They wouldn't let me take my camera with me, so I couldn't take a picture from the ride itself. Oh well.
On the way out of the amusement park we walked through the Lego Land thing, which is a place for people (well, kids :-) to play with the Legos and build things, as well as a store with everything Lego. We enjoyed that.
Then over to Silicon Speedway, where we entered a race. There are 20 people on track at a time, but our race had 5 human drivers and 15 computer drivers. I had some trouble on the opening lap (frankly, I don't know what happened, I just basically started in last place) and I passed only three people in the 10 lap race, so I finished 17th. Mark started something like 12th and finished 9th, but I don't remember the exact details. This thing is a lot like the Indy Racing thing that TK and I did at the Sahara (I think) in Las Vegas, but way better. I can imagine spending a lot of money there if I lived here.
We continued to walk around the mall for a while, had lunch at the Twin Cities Grill, which was quite good (they specialize in Minnesota-style food -- I don't know what that means exactly, but they served horseradish with my patty melt).
After we felt that we'd exhasted the mall (actually, it exhausted us -- we didn't see nearly all of it, but we were done -- we're guys, after all, we can't shop for more than 2 consecutive hours without help), we headed back to the car and drove through downtown Minneapolis. It's a neat-looking city -- real clean, and the walking/bike path along the Mississippi River is pretty nice (see the pictures). We actually walked through the Post Office too, which we happened to park right next to. It was closed, this being Sunday, but it was *huge* and had all of these antique-looking desks and windows and everything -- amazing. But I forgot to take a picture of that.
After that, we headed across the river to St. Paul. Actually we got ourselves a little bit lost, but we eventually found downtown St. Paul. Just drove around a bit, then headed to the airport. Dropped Mark off for his 6:30 flight back to Philadelphia, and then came back to the campground. Threw some laundry in the machines, tried (again) to download my e-mail (as of right now, I haven't received any e-mail since Friday afternoon -- if anyone sent me anything this weekend that they really want me to see, resend it -- it might eventually appear, but I'm willing to bet it's been lost).
So, now I'm just finishing up today's journal entry, making myself some dinner, and fully cleaning the motorhome after the whole Nationals week with all of its guests. It survived very well, but it's a little dirty.
I'll spend a bit of time tonight planning out tomorrow's route -- I'll be heading west, to South Dakota, Wyoming, and maybe a bit of Montana and North Dakota too, just to check them off the list :-)