Minneapolis

It’s been a busy week for us. On my last blog, I said that we hoped to make it to Sioux Falls that night, which we did. We decided to try boondocking (dry camping) in a Costco parking lot, thinking it would be quieter than a 24 hour Walmart parking lot. We chose an out of the way spot so as to be considerate of the business. Unfortunately, we overthought our consideration, and ended up parking near the loading docks of the warehouse, which began operations in the early hours of the morning, even on a Sunday! We got moving pretty early (around 9 am) , excited that we only had a 4 hour drive ahead of us. I don’t quite know how it happened, but it seems par for the course so far on our road trip that we didn’t pull into the campground outside of Minneapolis until 6:50 pm.

I’ll get on to our week’s adventures in a minute, but I have to start with the campground itself. To be fair, this is only our 3rd campground stay so far this trip. However, the park where we are now is likely to be one of the nicest of our entire trip. It’s a 2700 nature reserve with 6+ miles of paved biking trails, a huge play area, and a lake. We have a spacious RV site, larger than any other we’ve had (except, of course, when we had the Lookout Pass parking lot all to ourselves!). The only drawback is that they only have electric hookups, not full hookups with water & sewer too, so we have to move the RV every 2-3 days to empty our tanks and refill the fresh water. Fortunately, they have very nice bathrooms with individual shower stalls.

We are located about 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. We have driven into the Twin Cities everyday except for today. On Monday, we went to the Mall of America. The huge attraction there was the Lego Store. They had quite a variety of lego sets which attracted Blake's interest, but Erika really like the pink foam sword and was willing to take on anyone that walked by, whether they wanted to duke it out or not!

Tuesday we went to the Science Museum of Minnesota. It was an okay science center, but the kids were most attracted to the putt putt golf course out back, and of course the gift shop.

Wednesday we were back downtown to go to the zoo. When we brought the kids to Minneapolis a few years ago, we went to the Minnesota Zoo, which is a huge zoo. This time, our co-worker, Jenn, suggested the Como Park Zoo which we tried instead. It is a little more run down and smaller, on par with the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma before they made all their improvements about 10 years ago. That said, we enjoyed it, primarily because the price was right - free or a modest donation (suggested $2/adult & $1/child). So for only $5, we got to see tigers, lions, some varieties of primates, giraffes, zebras & more.

Thursday we went to the opening day of the Minnesota State Fair. I'm not sure whether it has a smaller footprint or a larger attendance, but it was more crowded than I have ever seen the Washington State Fair in Puyallup. There were a couple of cool attractions that we enjoyed. One was the Miracle of Birth exhibit, where they housed expectant and newly birthed babies & their mamas.

Before we left for the fair, I told Kyle about this exhibit and he said "That's wierd." I said, "Why?" He said, " Well do they get paid or something?" I replied, "With what, some extra hay or something? What would animals want with money?" He laughed "Oh, I thought you were talking about humans giving birth." We got a good laugh out of that, and I agreed with him that it would indeed be odd to have pregnants moms sitting around waiting to give birth, and allowing anyone to watch them.

We didn't see any actual births, but they did have a video replay of a cow giving birth to a calf earlier that morning. The kids were kind of grossed out at viewing the deliveries but they did enjoy seeing the cute little babies.

The other exhibit that the kids enjoyed the most was a mini farm experience. It was really geared for preschoolers, but they allowed all the kids through once (they kicked Kyle out when he tried to go a second time). The kids went through a series of activities where they play-acted the necessary farm activities. At the end, they sold their harvest of vegetables, eggs, and wool at the mock farmer's market and received play money which they could spend at a modestly stocked store. This is what really intrigued the kids, because they got to walk away with a serving size box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal!

Mark has been busy all week with customer meetings and work, so he was only able to join us around 5 at the fair. Writing it all now, it doesn't seem so much, but the reality is that we have been slow to adjust to Central time. I don't think we've gotten the kids to bed before 10 all week, and with all the activities, neither of the girls have had much in the way of naps. So today, Friday, we stayed at the campground while Mark went into Minneapolis for a meeting. Today also happens to be my birthday. So for my birthday dinner, we went to Costco to pick up a chocolate cake as that was my request. We ate dinner at the Costco foodcourt, and then ate the cake with an ice cream bar from the foodcourt right there. The best treat of all was to not have to clean the kitchen or do dishes!