Bayfield, WI to Woodbury, MN

So, today’s interesting town name was Taylors Falls.  We just had to go through it, for obvious reasons!  Sadly, the falls have been gone since 1906 when they constructed a dam. 

Grant had to stop for Wisconsin cheese while we were still in Wisconsin.  We got to taste 12 year old Wisconsin cheddar.  That made Grant very happy.  

We made it to another state today – Minnesota, where we dropped the trailer in Woodbury and headed straight for our destination of Minneapolis.  Mom and Dad wanted to show Janine and Kristy some of the things they remember about the city when they lived here in 1974.  After parking the trailer, we headed for Nicollet Mall, a 14 block open air mall including restaurants, stores, hotels, interesting sculptures, fountains, and even a huge beautiful old church (spanning almost a whole city block).  While there we had dinner at the Brit Pub, an English Pub style restaurant, and then watched some people lawn bowling on the roof (English style).  Then we walked the open air mall for about 3 blocks.  There were lots of people bicycling on it and other people riding in the cart pulled by bicycle taxis (only public transportation, bicycles, and bicycle taxis are allowed on the street).  The neat statue of the newsboy on the newspaper building reminded us of the movie Newsies.  Grant remembered using the walkways between buildings when it was snowy miserable weather in Minneapolis.  We just had to take a picture of a multi-story Target.  There was also a Target Home Decorating store on the other side of the street – never heard of that.   It looked like it had some nice furnishings. 

Then, we tried to find the Minnehaha Parkway loop around the lakes in Minneapolis, but we could only find a small part of it – too many one way streets and major highways confusing the drive.  The directions we printed out were very confusing.   We also tried to find the apartment building, where they lived in a one bedroom apartment and baby Janine slept in her crib in a closet, and the YMCA where she learned to swim before she was one year old.  We didn’t find those either.   We gave up and had ice cream sundaes for dessert.