After seven days at the Minnesota State Fairground outside St Paul, we decided to spend a couple of days seeing the area so we took our shortest one day drive yet – 6 miles – to Lowry Grove RV Park. It has a good laundry, full hookups and apparent proximity to everything we want to see . It is otherwise over priced and the sites are small and difficult to access amidst the broken down seasonals and mobile homes.
Friday after setting up and doing laundry we set out to see the State Capitol in St Paul and the Cathedral just down the street. Both are very impressive and worth the stop, bring quarters to the Capitol as there is no place to get them and the meters take 6 for an hour, allow at least an hour for the tour. The parking at the Cathedral was free and depending on your interests it could take 30 minutes or as much more as your inclinations suggest.
Upon leaving the Cathedral at about 4:30 PM we decided that a good plan for the day was to drive to Mall of America in Bloomington, just south of Minneapolis, and take the light rail into the Nicolette Mall in Minneapolis and have dinner at a sidewalk cafe. The drive there was uneventful and Germaine got us there with no problems. We parked in the West lot only to discover that the train ran from the East lot. This enabled us to walk through the entire mall on the second level and get a good overview of a gigantic mall with a huge indoor amusement park in the middle. Amazing! We caught the train for $2 each for 6 hour tickets and wondered as it began to fill to bursting. Only after the third stop did we notice the many Twins shirts and realize that the stop two before ours was the Metrodome where the Twins play, yup it was a game night.
We finally got to Nicolette Mall and took a nice stroll before selecting Zelo’s as the place for dinner. It was a wonderful meal and when we finally got to look inside it turns out to be a very fancy restaurant as well as having fine food. Carol and I had noted during dinner that women going in to the restaurant were very well dressed in fancy outfits and high heels, unlike many others on the street. Following dinner we resumed our stroll and were drawn in by the sound of music, well some might call it music. It was Rock. Minneapolis celebrates summer with the Aquatennial (that is not a misspelling) and it includes loud music, beer and too much smoking of all sorts. The crowd was young and in a party mood. The characteristic that drew us closer to the stage, at the risk of our hearing was a Hammond B3 organ playing at the front of the group. Too much noise and echo to really enjoy it. We bailed out and headed for the train.
Oops, the game wasn’t over but the Twins had a 6 run lead and the fans were headed home. Another train filled to overflowing. By 10:15 or 10:30 we were in the car ready to get to Gee 2 and some sleep. It was not to be for some time. You must have read that a bridge over the Mississippi has fallen down, try to tell that to a Garmen Nuvi 350 GPS, it refused to understand and would not reroute us. Worse I35W Northbound was closed further south and we could not even reach the bridge that was open. We found ourselves on surface streets with no idea where we were. A gas station operator sent us back south to the Mall of America to start over by going east to I 35E to go north. The GPS did not like this and kept trying to turn us around, I kept hoping we would get to where the I35E route would be the more direct route. We reached that point finally only to find the road closed for weekend construction. Back to surface roads, at least by now we were on the east of the river as is the campground. No one we spoke to had any idea how to get anyplace without the Interstates and we could not trust the GPS as it also assumed the interstates were open. Finally, I put in the Fairgrounds as my destination, figuring that I had gotten to the campground from there once and I could do it again. ALMOST!! we ran into two more closed exits blocking our access to the campground. Another 3 miles out of the way and we finally pulled into Lowry Grove after 90 minutes of not having a clue of how to get there. I kissed the hood on Gee 2 and Carol cheered my finally getting us there.
Today has been clean up and relax so far. There is Raptor Center not far from here and other things to see that will not require the use of interstates. We do wonder what the Republicans are going going to do here in late summer when they overlap the State Fair and the road repair will not be finished. The locals are trying to see how far away they can get!
No plan for tomorrow, yet, but I think we will head for the north shore and ultimately, Duluth and over the top of the Great Lakes.