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Published: September 28th 2013
Mall of AmericaStarted our day with a trip to the "Mall of America". As promised it is huge and I mean huge! Even spotted a casino in there. The Nickelodeon Universe playground in itself has lots of great rides for kids and adults alike - you could spend half a day here.
We walked around every level - trying to take it all in. There are no grocery stores in this place all just specialty stores and everything else you could imagine. Naturally this the states most visited tourist attraction. The mall is in Bloomington just 15 minutes from downtown and a few minutes away from the international airport. The Minneapolis airport is a major airport - planes taking off and landing just above you in a constant stream of air traffic! I swear we could see the pilot in some of those aircraft - they fly so low into the city!
Decided to drive back into the city of Minneapolis and try and park the RV so we could see a few more of the downtown sites we had on our list. We managed this quite fine today - parking outside the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in a parking lot for
With Dora!$3.50 for the day. Parking in the downtown is very cheap compared to other major cities in this country.
Lots of cyclists in this city as well - plenty of bike tracks and most of it on level grounds. I still shudder when I see a cyclist in the middle of the road in the city though - and many of them without a helmet too! The sculpture garden sits on an 11 acre site in the middle of the city and showcases more than 40 works of sculpture art. Admission is free.
It is amazingly quiet here considering its inner city location. The art pieces are very unique - one worth mentioning is the "spoonbridge and cherry" which is a 40ft spoon with a huge cherry balancing on the end (the cherry weighs in as 1200 pounds). Another "Standing Glass Fish" is a 22 ft high glass fish constructed in a glasshouse rising above a lily pond and set amongst palm trees.
We crossed over the Irene Hixton Whitney Bridge which crosses over 16 lanes of traffice below. Along the bridge is a poem that covers the whole bridge. On the other side of the bridge
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Lego anyone? is Lorings Park. Another beautiful spot to either sit and relax or to explore. Surrounding areas have several old churches that sit proudly showcasing this lovely city.
A few miles away is the Stone Arch Bridge (part of St Anthony's historic district). The bridge is walkable or you can cycle over and you follow a heritage trail that goes for 2 miles. It is a flat walk so quite easy and you are surrounded by history everywhere you look. The bridge is part of the Minneapolis Riverfront District) and also passes through the mill district where there are several ruins of flour mills from days gone by. Makes for ideal photo opportunities especially of the amazing Mississippi River.
The Stone Arch bridge was built in 1882/1883 - 600 men worked for 22 months day and night - the bridge was constructed from. 100,00 tons of stone - granite and limestone.
To finish off our visit to Minneapolis we took a short drive to the arts district and stopped in at a local Brewery named "Dangerous Man". There are several of these breweries in town - they basically brew their own beers and sell them in a pub
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Lego transformer style setting. We tried a tulip (small glass) of 2 of their beers before heading of on the road.
Minneapolis has been an enjoyable experience. There is much more to see and do here but as always there is limited time. We need to get going back on the road - our next major stop being Milwaukee Wisconsin. The Wisconsin border is not too far from St. Paul in Minneapolis. Being Friday afternoon there was a lot of traffic with people heading out for the weekend.
Wisconsin is known as the "Dairyland" state and this is evident by the amount of dairy farms visible as you cross the border.
Our plans were to drive and pull over by 7pm. Well that never happened (seems to happen a lot). We needed to dump our RV waste and fill up with fresh water before dark but that turned out to be an impossible task in Wisconsin. Stopped at several gas stations - went in and asked the attendants where to find what we needed - some of them looked at us like we were aliens and no clue what we were talking about - another said they didn't have
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Opera house lego them in Wisconsin and started looking up the yellow pages for waste management sites only then to tell us there were none....we also asked what other RV drivers do with their waste and were told "we don't know - never been asked that question before!"
Now we were in a dilemma as it was dark and that makes it nearly impossible to find the unknown in a place you've never been to before. In the town of Eau Claire we came across a RV resort and decided we better stay the night here - only the office was closed and nobody around to help us out - so we drove through the resort knowing that they must have a dump station and fresh water available to their guests. Once we found that we quickly did what we needed and headed back onto the interstate to find a place for the night.
Funny how when your tired, hungry and frustrated nothing goes as it should. Ended up stopping in at a McDonalds for some wings and fries to share on the road....by this time it was 10pm and the boss had enough driving for the day! GPS was to
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Nickelodeon universe take us to a camp site in the town of Black River Falls - good only 20 miles away - but we ended up at a gas station in this town! I can tell you that the poor GPS received a mouthful from the boss.
10.30pm - and we are somewhere in Wisconsin - too tired to go any further. Luckily we spotted the local fairgrounds so that was it for the night! We slept well - too tired to care about anything! Tomorrow we continue our journey towards Milwaukee.
Note - when leaving the campground and heading back to the highway we found a Walmart a few miles in the opposite direction to what the GPS told us! The joys of travel 😊
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