Twin City Time

We moved to an RV park in Woodbury, on the east side of St. Paul for a busy week in the Twin Cities. The first stop was at the Mall of America, but sadly we forgot our camera again! We returned later in the week, so we post a photo of the main attraction - a series of high ropes to climb in the amusement area in the center of the mall. Five stories high, both boys climbed to the top and bravely walked the 'plank' to sound the foghorn. We picked up a few essential items while there during the busy Labor Day weekend shopping and left the mall as everything was closing down at 9:30 pm!

The next trip was to see Como Park and go to the zoo. This was on Labor Day and the park was very busy with Minnesotans enjoying a last outing before school schedules began the next day. The Minnesota State Fair was also in full swing on it's last day so people were parking everywhere in the park and walking over. We drove around the large park, enjoying the sights but finding no parking. We nixed that plan and drove over to downtown Minneapolis.

Somewhat deserted on the holiday, we were actually happy to be some of the few browsers and shoppers. Our oldest son has fond memories of visiting the city a few years ago. The architecture of many of the buildings and the skyscrapers still held their fascination for him. He enjoyed showing his little brother the ropes of how to get around the downtown area on the skywalks. To the left of the boys on street level is the sculpture of Mary Tyler Moore preparing to toss her beret into the sky.

We happened across a 'Great Clips' salon that had no waiting, so the guys all got trimmed up! We browsed around the area and took in the sights until things began shutting down around 5 pm, so we took our tired feet back to the truck and the camper.

The next outing was the Science Museum in downtown St. Paul. We arrived early and stayed most of the day with five stories to explore. First was a film on the exploration of the sunken Titanic on an I-max screen. The film featured Russian scientists exploring in specially designed submarines that descended 2 1/2 miles in the icy seas to film the two massive pieces of the sunken vessel and retrieve specimens and artifacts.

We then descended a musical flight of stairs to tour the special exhibit hall. The boys took a couple of extra trips on the flight of stairs to create their own musical rhythms and scales.

Photos are not allowed in this special exhibit. Photos of the Titanic's construction and a model of the phenomenal ship are the centerpieces of the first area. The exhibit presented a detailed history of the period and chronicled life on the great ship as you viewed items salvaged from deep water resting place. They also did a wonderful job of telling many of the personal stories of those traveling on the ship from all walks of life. Each visitor was given a card that told the story of one of the passengers. You got to know your person and imagined their experiences on the voyage and see at the end whether they were among the survivors. It was a terrific enrichment for the boys to understand and appreciate this period of history.

The museum building was awesome architecture located along a winding section of the majestic Mississippi river. Among the many river exhibits was one that showed the beginning headwaters that we had just walked across earlier in month.

The boys were a little more interested in the interactive exhibits such as the barge pilot simulator or the champion fish lift.

The health and body exibiits held our attention for quite a while. One display got a little too interactive for Will as he opened a door over the face of a little girl's picture and she sneezed on him!

The science museum was an excellent investment for fun and enrichment to our traveling home education.