Minnesota (did you say it with the Minnesota accent?)

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After stopping in Wisconsin to visit friends and play a few games of pool, we headed west toward Minnesota. Of course, on our way across Wisconsin we did stop to pickup some cheese (yum!). Our first stop in Minnesota was Minneapolis, where we swung by Mall of America just to check it out.

The list of shops in the directory was dumbfounding, so we started walking around. In the center of the 100-acre mall is a mini amusement park, with roller coasters, rides, carnival games and ridiculous prizes. Looks like fun, but as we just spent a couple of days at Cedar Point, we moved on. We walked a full circle around the outside of this amusement area, which sounds simple but it was quite a hike! this outer area is where all the shops are. Many were the familiar, other were quirky little trendy places we'd never heard of, but overall, it was simply a shoppers paradise (as long as you were wearing sneakers. I'd hate to be there just before Christmas!

Next, we headed North, to the Western tip of Lake Superior. On our way, a local shopkeeper told us to check out a giant local nativa american statue. See Photo. Then onward, to Duluth. Duluth is quite the little hidden jewel. While it's mostly industrial, it has a cozy haven of coffee shops, restaurants, and locally owned shops down near the famed Aerial Lift Bridge. It connects the mouth of the lake's harbor to the mainland...and on the other side of the bridge, if you choose to drive over, is a long sandbar-like strip of beautiful park. It also has an old tugboat that now sells ice cream, and an old iron ore transport ship that's a couple hundred yards long. Whew! It was a cool little town, but you can tell that the only movement in the wintertime is simply the industry, when all of the tourists and even the locals don't brave the freezing snowy streets.

Heading West again, we stopped to take a picture of the Big Fish Supper Club...a small bar/restaurant that used to be entirely inside a big ole' fish...but now resides inside a connected log cabin-esque building. The fish is still there, however. Bring back National Lampoon memories?

Our last stop in Minnesota was the town of Bemidji, with its claim to fame of being "The First City on the Mississippi". This doesn't mean it is the oldest and first founded...the city began in 1896. Rather, it's the very first city along the banks of the Mississippi, as the river winds down from the tiny lake that is its origin. To see the Mississippi from the delta in New Orleans, all the way up through Nashville, Missouri, Iowa, and Minneapolis...and then finally at its tiniest stream-like size...was amazing. The other draw of Bemidji are the Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox statues. There are 3 others in the country, but these will of course be the quintecential ones, oweing to their being featured in our blog (haha!). We drove past a gigantic paper mill on our way across the state, so you know that the industry Babe and Bunyan are memorialized for is still going strong. Hopefully that means the mill plants as many trees as they fell in this land of 10,000 lakes!

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