Minnesota and the Mall of America- Saturday, July 1, 2017

     Yesterday, we jokingly asked Emma which she hated more- the Miller Beer tour or all of the Packers stuff.  She said it was hard to say.  The girls need a break from "Dad stuff," and luckily, we had the nation's largest mall scheduled for today.

     We left Green Bay a little after 8:00 and headed west.  We drove through a lot of flat, farm country, not surprisingly.  We noticed that many of the barns had their own large "quilt square pattern" hanging over the door.  Each design had a different geometric pattern, and they seemed to represent the families that were living there.

      After crossing the Minnesota border, we stopped at the welcome center to find a place for a family selfie.  We're probably going to do something like this for all of our remaining states.  But only Julie seemed to notice the next big milestone on our trip west-- when we crossed the Mississippi River, just south of St. Paul.

     We reached the Mall of America by just after 1:00, and Scott insisted that we eat first and shop later.  He promised that there would be lots of time to explore and shop.  We knew that the food courts were on the third level, so we made our way there.  We each found something that we liked to eat, and while we had lunch, we marveled at the densely packed amusement park called Nickelodeon Universe.  From our table we had a wide view overlooking this part of the mall.  There is a log flume ride and several intricately connected roller coasters, and just about every type of ride imaginable.  As you looked across the scene, it seemed like you had seen everything when some new movement would make you notice a ride you hadn't spotted before, like a kid on a zip-line crossing the length of the space, or a spinning or a bouncing or a twisting that you had missed before.  Outdoor amusement parks can use wide open spaces, but the designers here made an impressive use of very little space.

     The only thing that we rode on was a presentation called "FlyOver America."  The concept and mechanism is basically the same as the "Soaring" rides at the Disney parks, which have been a favorite of ours.  The ride has you suspended in front of a large curved screen, and the film is made to look as if you are gliding across various landscapes.   This month, the Mall is also featuring "FlyOver Canada," and since today is the 150th birthday of Canada, and we're basically Canadaphiles anyway, we paid for the dual movie experience.  (That's right we spent Canada Day in an American mall.  People used to the Walden Galleria can write their own jokes about that irony.)  The Canada film was shown first, and then we were allowed to stay in our seats for the America film.  Both had similar scenes in that they showed the Rocky Mountains, farmland, sporting activities, city skylines and famous landmarks. When you flew through clouds you would be sprayed with a fine mist to add to the realism, and when you flew over places like pine forests, you could smell the trees from the scent added to the air for realism.  Among the American landmarks was the city of Chicago that we had come to know pretty well this week, and Canada's featured fireworks over the city of Toronto.   Each movie showed a different view of Niagara Falls, and we all thought similar thoughts when we saw and flew through the mist over them.  Emma said she felt like she was almost home.  Especially considering the films were pretty short, a family has to spend an awful lot of money for them ($100 for a family of four for both films), but we did enjoy the ride.  We were going to let Anna and Emma ride more of the rides if they wanted to because YOVMOAO (You only visit the Mall of America once), but they didn't want to.  They wanted to go shopping.

     The mall is set up like a huge square.  There are anchor stores at the corners.  The Nickelodeon amusement park is in the center of the square.  There are basically three main levels of shopping space around the square, with a little bit of a fourth one on top.  Once you get those bearings, it isn't hard to figure out where you are.  Stores are marked with a number in the upper right of their windows that tell you what side of the square you are on and help coordinate the stores to maps and directories.   A store that is labelled "W-105," for example, is on the west side on the 1st floor, and a store labelled "S-315" is on the south side on the third level.

     There are a few cases of repeated stores, which seemed like cheating to us.  For example, we saw four different Lids stores and there is a fifth one listed on the map.  There at least two Pink stores.  It's also true that most of the stores are stores that you can find in just about every mall across the United States.  But there were a few unique ones, or at least, ones that were new to us.  We all liked one called "Minnesot-Ah" which sold items related to the state.  Julie and Emma each bought a t-shirt here, and Scott was able to buy a state flag for his collection.  The Minnesota Vikings have a team store here with the walls covered in purple jerseys and memorabilia.  One of the clerks there jokingly gave Anna a hard time about the Green Bay hoodie that she was wearing.  The girls liked a place called The Animal Lovers Store that features items for dog-lovers, cat-lovers, and other animals-lovers.  They also liked a store called Worker B, which features honey products.  Here, Emma and Julie sampled various flavors of honey (and Julie ended up buying a jar) while Anna was impressed with the skin care products made from honey as well.

    We won't try to list everything that the three girls bought at the mall.  Suffice it to say that we helped the Twin City economy out a great deal, and did a good job breaking in a new credit card that Julie had saved for the occasion.  It helped that there was no tax on clothes here, and much of what the girls bought can be worn to school this fall.  Anna's favorite purchase was probably a Michael Kors wallet that goes with the bag that she bought in China.  Scott only got the Minnesota state flag, mentioned above, but he was very content watching how happy the girls were.

     We started at the Disney store at S-118 and made our way around the first floor.  By the time we had completely circumnavigated the square on the first floor and were ready to go to the second, we had already been there for over 5-hours total.  We had only done one floor.  We hadn't touched the anchor stores at all, and still had two more main floors to go.  We were all stunned when we realized how long it was going to take us to do levels two and three as well.  We decided to take a dinner break and went for nachos at Margaritaville (which ended up being too soggy) at E-344.  We decided then that the Mall had beaten us.  After dinner, we surrendered and decided to move on.  Scott wanted it noted that, unlike usual, he had enjoyed shopping and was not the person suggesting that we leave, and he was willing to stay and shop more, but the girls were done.  Anna just wanted one more pass at Forever 21, at E-144, which we had passed through on our way to lunch, but after that we went to the car.

     It was after 8:00, and we still had about an hour and a half to ride to our hotel in New Ulm, Minnesota.  As the sun was going down, Julie spotted a raccoon, and we all watched the twinkling as the fireflies came out in the grasses along the roadside.   In this motel, Scott and Julie have a room on the first floor, and Anna and Emma are directly above them on the second floor.   The girls seemed excited to have their own room like they had in China and other places, but they looked disappointed when they realized that an American hotel room would only have one bed and so they'd still have to end up sleeping with each other.