We went down Friday and along the way stopped by the AWAM museum (http://www.americanwings.org/). The website said they would be open "First Saturday after New Years’ thru mid-May Friday & Saturday - 10:00am - 4:00pm", but when we arrived it was rather obvious that they were closed for the winter. I was rather disappointed. I once had a logbook of some of the first trial flights of the OV-10A, given to me by one of the pilots from the test program (I believe it was his personal logbook, rather than an official one) and had been looking forward to learning more about the aircraft. No such luck.
After staying the night in a hotel (more on that later) we visited the Minnesota Transportation Museum's (http://www.mtmuseum.org/) Jackson Street Roundhouse. It's amazing what the group of volunteers has been doing here. The Roundhouse is full of restoration projects actively being worked on, with more in the yard awaiting time and space. They are restoring a steam engine from the ground up, have a train that runs out of Osceola during the summer, and we took a short caboose ride in the yard there. They also have several ancient pullman cars that visitors can walk thru, really cool.
Just by chance, I think we caught the last day of an incredible exhibit, a huge LEGO train set.
After spending 3 hours at the Jackson Street Roundhouse, we traveled about 2 miles down the road to the Science Museum of Minnesota (http://www.smm.org/). After spending half an hour puzzling out the most efficient way to buy tickets we headed in to see the dinosaurs. Fascinating museum. Everything is very hands on. For example, want to see how waves act as the ocean and beach depth change? Have a seat at the controls of the wave machine and you can change the shoreline slope, change the speed of the wave action, change the length of the waves.
We also went to a showing of the Omni film "Grand Canyon", which is severely mis-labeled. We had expected to see stunning vistas of the walls of the Grand Canyon, aerial shots and so on. Instead, the film should have been entitled "White-water rafting thru the Grand Canyon, with extensive commentary about how Man has destroyed the ecosystem". All in all, a very disappointing film. It was technically challenging, I'd love to know how some of the photography was accomplished, and I'd like to make the trip someday, but NOT what was expected. And, for my first Omni film, not a good way to sell me on the advantages. I had a very sore neck from trying to look up and behind me the entire time, and there was nothing there that couldn't have been shown just as well on a flat screen .
We spent about 6 hours in the museum, and if we had been able to we could have easily spent that much more time, but everyone was exhausted.
Sunday morning we headed for the Mall of America (http://www.mallofamerica.com) What an experience. We walked across the Nickelodeon Universe to the LEGO store, with plans to come back and do a few rides. After an hour spent oohing and ahhing at the LEGO displays, we headed down to the Underwater Adventures Aquarium. What a fascinating tour! Everything from turtles, Koi, alligators, salmon to sharks and an octopus. Really neat. By the time we got out it was after 3PM. I took lots of pictures, but the low lighting (it IS underwater, after all) and moving animals made decent photography difficult.
We had been hoping to be home by 4PM, but 7PM was the reality. A really fun trip. I took about twice as many photos as I've posted, and others took photos also that I am going to try to get copies of to add to the gallery later.
Oh yeah, the hotel. We stayed at the Prime Rate Motel in Burnsville, found a VERY GOOD price on it thru Priceline.com. Two of my criteria were free wireless internet and a pool. The wireless internet worked great. When we arrived on Friday about 5 PM we were told the pool was closed for maintenance but would be open about 7. OK, so we went and got dinner. About 8 we headed for the pool and found it still closed and the whirlpool was filled to nearly double the posted capacity. We were told the pool would be opening Saturday night. So, when we returned Saturday from the museum, we found a cold (but open!) pool and both it and the whirlpool were heavily over-chlorinated. I lasted about 15 minutes.
The rooms were very small. The beds were extremely hard. The nightlife was loud. It was very good to be back in my waterbed last night.
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