When we set out to plan this trip, we were going to stay two whole days in Tomahawk, but my dad wanted to go to a Museum in Minneapolis, so we decided to stay only one hole day since the 4th of July is on Saturday. My dad set out about 12 to 15 years ago to create the family tree. He has since then made stops at different Museums, Genealogical Societies, and cemeteries to reconstruct the family tree. On this trip he wanted to stop at a research museum in Minneapolis. This is his third attempt at going to this museum. The first time that he tried to visit it he was unable to find the place. A bad snow storm prevented him from visiting it last year. And this year, it was closed for the holiday. After we made plans to stay in Minneapolis, he called to find out the hours of the research institution of the museum, and promptly found out that it was closed on Friday. Three strikes and you’re out, but he is going to try a fourth time on some future trip. You can do that when you are retired, because I wouldn't call Minneapolis a must visit city. I doubt it is in the top 200 cities to visit. The trip today was going to be short and sweet. We left Tomahawk just after 8 AM. There wasn't much to see between Tomahawk and Minneapolis, unless you want to visit any number of cheese factories. They love their cheese curds up here. They seem to be right up there with bratwursts. We arrived at the campground around 12:30 PM.
After unhooking the trailers and a quick bite to eat for lunch, it was time to see some sights. This meant going to the Mall of America. We have traveled 4300 miles just to go to a mall. Miles wanted to go to see the Mall of America, because Robert Irvine once was there. Who is Robert Irvine? Well, Lisa's second favorite channel is the Food Network. If there were only two TV channels available and they were HGTV and the Food Network, she would be completely happy. She would be equally happy if there wasn't ESPN, which I like to watch. On the Food Network, is a show called Dinner Impossible where Robert Irvine must make a dinner for a certain number of people for an event within 8 hours or something like that. Lisa and Miles enjoy watching this show. Robert Irvine had to cook up a meal for the 15th anniversary celebration for the Mall of America. This episode aired last May, which is why Miles wanted to go there when he learned we were going to Minneapolis. As for the rest of us, we could have skipped this and still considered the trip a success. We arrived at the mall, which is huge. Parking wasn't bad since they have to large garages on opposite sides. The mall has just about every mall store you can think of. It also has some that you might find in the outlet centers, such as a Bose store. The place has lots of restaurants and the usual fast food places. The mall was also just packed with people. Think of how packed your local mall is during the Christmas Season, and this is how busy this mall is.
Lisa found a gourmet chef store that she and my mom decided to look around in. While they looked around the gourmet chef store, Mile, my dad and I ventured off to the Lego store, since Miles wanted to buy some Legos. He wants to build the Sears Tower, oops, the Willis Tower, with Legos. After we got some Legos and met up with Lisa, my mom and Samantha, we headed over to check out the America Girl store at the mall. Samantha wanted to go looking through this store. I only wished there was an ESPN or golf store to look through. Who every came up with the idea for American Girl and the marketing for it is just amazing. The dolls cost hundreds of dollars and the accessories and clothes cost additional coin. This was my first time in an American Girl store, and had to start to laugh when I saw the Salon in the store. You can have your dolls hair and makeup done for you. I would think that doing a dolls hair would be easy, but people pay to have their dolls hair done right in the store. I was told there is a hospital in the stores, which makes since if the doll needs repair. If you are going to pay over $100 for a doll and the arm comes off, you would want to get it fixed. This particular store doesn't have the hospital, but I am told that the one in Los Angeles does have the hospital. Anyway, Samantha was happy looking around at the many dolls and accessories. She owns one of the dolls that she bought with her own money. She has various accessories as well that she has bought with her money or was given as gifts. This time around she didn't buy anything. 
After looking around the mall, we really didn't look that much. It is a mall after all. We let the kids ride a couple of rides at the Nickelodeon Universe Theme Park in the mall. Nickelodeon is one of their favorite channels, and would be happy if HGTV, Food Network and ESPN didn't exist at all. The Nickelodeon Universe is in the middle of the mall. They both decided to ride different roller coasters, of course, just to make us wait around longer. The Theme Park is a lot like a local carnival. You purchase a number of tickets and the rides cost a various number tickets to ride. The only difference is that you get a single ticket with a barcode and a computer keeps track of the number of tickets that you use. So we had only a single ticket for the two of them and couldn't have Lisa go with one and I go with the other. The only saving grace is that they both wanted to ride the bumper cars for their second ride, which
made things easier. Oh, if things were only that easy and they are not, the bumper cars line was long and they only had eight cars, so waiting for this ride alone was about the same length of time as waiting for both roller coasters. The day ended with us going to a Costco to pick up some provisions. I knew where one was since I have had to come to Eden Prairie, which is a town outside of Minneapolis. I don’t come to Eden Prairie because I think it’s a great town. I go there for work.
There is a vendor that my company uses in this town. I avoid going during the winter. Only a crazy man would go during winter. We drove a total of 283 miles to day. We have driven a total of 4302 miles for the entire trip. We purchased $58 dollars worth of gas today.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment