DAY 12: 7/4
We had a very busy day ahead, so we left our hotel at about 8 a.m.
First
up was the Mall of America in Minneapolis, which was about an hour
and a
half from our hotel in Rochester, MN. That place is HUGE!
But
underneath the hype, it is still a regular mall--just larger and with
more
stores. =) Did you know that it attracts more visitors
annually than
Disneyworld, Graceland, and the Grand Canyon COMBINED? Yeah,
I'll
never understand it either. Anyway, the things that make this
mall really
unique are the attractions inside. They have an aquarium, an
amusement park,
and the General Mills Cereal Adventure (a hands-on place where you
learn
about how cereal is made and get to mix your own custom box of cereal,
etc.)
just to name the few that we saw. We did not actually ride any
rides in the
amusement park, although we did walk through it (you have to--it's
in the
middle of the mall!). We also did not do the Cereal Adventure
because it
cost additional money. We did enjoy looking through the cereal
store,
though. (For those of you who didn't know, General Mills is based
in
Minneapolis.)
However, Aliece DID go to the aquarium, because they boasted the world's
largest collection of turtles, and Aliece really likes turtles.
(I did NOT go to
the aquarium, because it cost money and didn't have penguins.)
She really
enjoyed it and took lots of turtle pictures. While she was in
the aquarium, I
wandered aimlessly through the mall. (I stopped in at Starbucks
to get a white
chocolate mocha first, of course.) After I walked through the
amusement park
(called Camp Snoopy), I saw the Lego Imagination Center! I love
Legos, so
of course I headed straight over there. It was basically a Lego
store, with a
bunch of Lego stuff built around it and inside it. They had a
big Lego Harry Potter,
Statue of Liberty, dinosaurs, and other neat creations. I bought
a t-shirt, and
learned that Minnesota doesn't have sales tax on clothing items!
Not bad.
Once I met back up with Aliece, we looked through the directory and
picked
out some stores to go to. We only wanted to go to stores that
we couldn't
go to in Atlanta. One of the places we went to was a souvenir
shop called
"Minnesot-ah!" They had lots of t-shirts and mugs that said,
"Yah! You
betcha!" While we were in there, a tourist (at least I HOPE he
was a
tourist), came in and asked if they had any other items with "Yah!
You
betcha!" on it. (I guess that's a big Minnesota catch-phrase...
I had heard
it before on TV shows and such with stereotypical "Minnesota" characters,
but I never actually heard anyone up there say it!) The clerks
just looked at him
as if he were from another planet and said all they had was what was
out there.
Also in the Minnesot-ah! store, we saw many postcards that featured
mosquitoes
on them. One of them even referred to the mosquito as the Minnesota
state bird.
This worried us a little, as we were planning on being outside on the
banks of the
Mississippi for the fireworks that night.
After looking at all the stores we wanted to and grabbing a bite to
eat, we drove
across the river to St. Paul to go to the Science Museum of Minnesota.
The original
reason we were going to this museum was because it houses a collection
of
"Questionable Medical Devices" that Aliece had seen in one of her books.
These
devices were invented by quack doctors to scam an unsuspecting public.
They were
very funny--you wonder how people actually believed those devices were
doing
anything productive! (But then you have to stop and think--is
the concept really that
different from some of the stuff people sell on TV in those infomercials?)
One of the
machines sat in drugstores and purported to use x-rays to heal your
feet or something.
The government had to recall it because of the danger of the x-rays
out in the open.
The machine sitting in the museum was the last one they found--I think
about 50 years
after the recall. They thought they had collected all the machines,
but this one was still
being used in a drugstore in West Virginia! Apparently the owners
had not heard of the
recall, and someone from the government just happened to be passing
through and
stopped in their store and saw the machine. Aliece and I just
laughed, because if the part
of West Virginia we were in earlier was any indication, this kind of
thing is completely within
the realm of possibility. After seeing how removed from civilization
the Palace of Gold was,
it does not at all surprise me that neither the owners nor any of their
clients for the past 50
years knew about the recall, or even that unleashing x-rays in a public
place is generally
considered to be "bad."
Also at the museum was an IMAX movie called Shackleton's Antarctic
Adventure which I wanted to see because....well, because there
are
penguins in Antarctica! The only time the movie was playing that
day was
8:00, and we had gotten to the museum at 3 or 4. So we looked
through
the rest of the exhibits and had dinner before the movie. They
had really
great exhibits about the Mississippi River (the museum is right on
the
river), the human body, optical illusions, and playing with time.
The
museum was very hands-on and just generally very cool.
Aliece finished with the exhibits before I did, so she went down to
a
payphone in the lobby to call a friend. The plan was that I would
come
down and meet her there when I finished and we would go to dinner.
(For those of you that don't know my sister and her phone habits, and
are
wondering what we would have done if she finished with her phone call
before I finished with the exhibits, let me assure you that this was
not
even a REMOTE possibility.) So after I finished I went down to
the lobby
and started walking toward the pay phones. Just then, something
kind of
flashy in the locker area caught my eye. I looked over there,
and there
was a woman with a weird outfit on (a very bright, flowing situation),
and some tinsel-sparkly-type stuff on her head and in her hair.
I just
thought to myself that she looked a little strange and kept walking.
I made
it over to my sister (who of course was still on the phone) and asked
her if
she had seen the lady. She replied that the lady had come up
to her and
started talking to her while she was on the phone! The lady had
introduced
herself as "Lady Liberty, " and offered my sister a mint! All
of this WHILE
my sister was on the phone...strange indeed.
We bought a few things in the gift shop (they had lots of penguin stuff)
and then walked outside to find someplace to eat. Since it was
a
holiday, most of the little restaurants nearby weren't open.
We ended up
eating at the Mississippi Mud Riverfront Grill (which was connected
with the
Holiday Inn), since it was the only place nearby that was open.
There were
about three people working that night, and we only saw two other customers
in
the restaurant. Once we got in and got our food though, the place
started to
fill up! (Told you we were trendsetters.) A family came
and sat in the booth
just past ours. They had a young son...maybe about 5 years old.
One time the
son got up to go somewhere, and when he came back, he was looking
at a book or magazine or something. I saw him walk toward us,
so
engrossed in what he was looking at, and it became apparent that he
was going
to stop at our table instead of his. So we just watched and waited
for the look
on his face when he noticed it was the wrong table--and let me tell
you it
was priceless! He stopped right at our table and just before
he was going to
sit down, he looked up. Of course we were both looking right
at him,
waiting for it, so this probably unnerved him a bit. =)
But anyway, he
recovered quickly and walked on to his table, and--more importantly--we
got a good laugh out of it.
After dinner we returned to the Science Museum and watched the Shackleton
movie. What an awesome movie! Not only did it have penguins,
but it was
a wonderful story of human courage and endurance. For those of
you who
aren't familiar with the story, I recommend that you read or watch
something about it, because it's fantastic. And if you get an
opportunity to
watch this IMAX movie, take it.
Following the movie, we headed back to downtown Minneapolis to catch
the
Independence Day fireworks over the Mississippi River. We didn't
know
exactly where the "viewing area" was, but we knew it was downtown and
that it was along the river. So we just drove down there until
we saw some
people parking and walking toward the river, and followed them.
We sat
down in the grass for a while, but started getting bitten up by the
"state bird"
immediately. So we walked up a little bit and sat down on a concrete
barrier thing, where there were much less mosquitoes.
Now, Minnesota does not have the laws against fireworks that Georgia
does. So we kept hearing and seeing fireworks being shot off
all over
the place. At first, we saw and heard them while we were walking
toward
the river, and we thought maybe we were late! Even during the
main show,
people in parking lots nearby kept shooting off their own fireworks.
Aliece
and I didn't understand why you would do it at the same time as the
big
fireworks--seemed a little crazy to us. =) Before or after,
yeah...but during?
The show was brilliant. There were a LOT of fireworks. You
know how at
fireworks shows (the ones we've been to anyway), they usually shoot
off a
lot at once for the finale? Well, we thought we were seeing the
finale about
5 different times throughout the show. We started to clap and
get up to leave,
but then we would look around and no one else was moving. And
then the
fireworks would just keep going! It finally ended after about
20 minutes, and
we drove back to the hotel. On the way back to the hotel, we
still saw fireworks
being shot off in random places--it was cool. We got back about
1 a.m.
DAY 13: 7/5
We woke up early again for another day of adventure in Minnesota.
This
time we were going to be doing a lot of the little museums in the rural
areas
nearer to our hotel. (Our base, Rochester, was in the southeastern
part of
Minnesota...I think I neglected to mention where it was earlier.)
Before heading
out, we checked the news to make sure Madison, WI, had survived the
holiday
yesterday. We were relieved to find out that all of the government
buildings were
still standing, and not a single one of the dairy farms had been attacked.
=)
First on the agenda today was Ed's Museum in Wykoff. I had made
an
appointment there for 9 a.m. That's right--the museum is so small
and
out-of-the-way that it doesn't open without an appointment! We
managed
to find this very small town of about 400-500 people without too much
trouble. We were supposed to meet our tour guide lady at the
gift shop
across the street from the museum. We went to the gift shop but
it was
closed and no one was inside. So we sat down on a bench out front
to
wait. Just then, a man drove by in his truck and asked if he
could help
us. (I guess he knew we weren't from around there!) I told
him we were
waiting to see Ed's Museum, and he said, "Oh, then I guess that'll
be
Connie or Esther you're looking for. I can call them at home
for you if
you need me to!" Awwwww yeah....that's a small town for you!
The man
then looked across the street at Ed's Museum and noted that one of
the ladies
might be in there already, because the shades were up and they were
usually
down. Thanking him, we went on across and sure enough, Esther
was there.
Esther introduced herself as one of the members of the Wykoff Historical
Society and said that one of the things they do is operate this museum.
(After talking with her a bit more extensively, we got the impression
that
the Historical Society consisted of her and only a few other ladies.)
She
told us that Ed was a man who lived in Wykoff and operated a grocery
store
there from 1933 until 1989 when he died. He was quite the packrat.
Apparently at some point in his life, he decided that he wanted his
house
and his store to be turned into a museum when he died, so he began
labelling
everything. There was so much stuff in that place! As we
continued on through
the tour, Esther pointed out various items that had been appraised
and were worth
quite a lot because of their rarity.
The bottom floor of the museum was Ed's store. Some of the canned
food,
candy bars, and sodas were still there in their original display boxes,
unopened.
Esther said that when they were cleaning the place up to make it a
museum, they
just left a lot of it alone. She said that as long as the food
wasn't attracting pests
or making a mess, they didn't worry about it. =) Also on
the first floor were a
bunch of antique-type toys that belonged to Ed, his wife, and his son.
There was
also a big wooden Frigidaire ice box, which Esther said the folks at
Frigidaire had
come by to look at. She said the representative who came to look
at it remarked
that the Frigidaire company would love to have that one for historical
purposes,
because they didn't have any of that model. No deal, of course.
=) Also there was
a player piano, with many rolls of songs to choose from. Esther
let us pick out one,
and she loaded it into the piano for us to listen to it. We had
chosen The Marine's Hymn,
and Esther said we had to sing with it. So there we were, my
sister and I and a
sixty-something lady, standing around a dead man's player piano in
Wykoff, Minnesota,
singing the Marine's Hymn! (Guess I can cross that off my "To
Do" list now....)
We then went upstairs to the living quarters. In her later years,
Ed's wife was confined to
a wheelchair, so he had an elevator installed that raised her up from
the back room of the
store to the screened-in balcony of their apartment. But it was
not an electric elevator--he
pulled her up himself using a rope and pulley! Now THAT'S devotion!
The apartment
also had all sorts of antique furniture and devices which we had never
seen before. The old
"appliances" in the kitchen were especially interesting--they look
so cumbersome and
old-fashioned to us now, but they represented vast improvements in
their time.
Then we went down to the basement. There was a room there which
contained--labelled and
in chronological order--every magazine Ed ever owned. Of special
note was his collection of
Life magazines. Esther told us that he had one of the
most complete collections there were.
He had every issue from the first one through the time of his death--not
a single one was missing!
Also in the basement was the highlight of the museum: Ed's cat
Sammy, who had died in 1986!
Esther said they were cleaning out the basement and came across a cardboard
box duct-taped
closed and simply labelled "Sammy." Sure enough, the cat was
in there! (And no, he wasn't
stuffed!) So they decided just to re-seal the box and leave it
there.
Also, in a side room off of Ed's Museum was the School Museum.
That area of rural
Minnesota had recently gone about consolidating some of the smaller
schools, and Wykoff lost its
high school as a result. So the women kicked into high gear to
preserve the history of the school
before everything was thrown away. In the museum were school
desks, yearbooks, newspapers,
textbooks, trophies, and uniforms (like athletic, cheerleading, band,
etc.). Also, they had class
pictures of most of the graduating classes since Wykoff High School
was founded. (Esther pointed
out the pictures of Ed, his wife, his son, and her own husband!)
She said it was appropriate that the
School Museum was there with Ed's Museum because Ed had been very involved
in the school. He
would always volunteer over there and he was a friend to all the students.
Overall, it sounds like Ed
was a pretty interesting guy (if a bit freaky), and we had a great
experience at his museum.
Next up was the Spring Valley Methodist Church Museum in Spring Valley,
Minnesota. It was a
town of about 2500--a booming metropolis next to Wykoff! (FYI,
Spring Valley High School is
the school into which the Wykoff students were "consolidated.")
This was kind of a catch-all
Spring Valley museum. Its main claim to fame was that it was
the church where Almanzo Wilder's
family attended. (Almanzo was the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder,
of "Little House on the Prairie"
fame.) Also he and Laura lived in Spring Valley and attended
that church for about a year of their
married life. So the main floor housed lots of pictures, newspaper
clippings, and items relating to the
Wilder family and the Little House stories. It also had a section
on the history of the church.
The bottom floor was a hodgepodge of collections. It had a section
about Richard Sears, since
he lived in Spring Valley for a time and was a friend of Almanzo Wilder's.
There was a collection of
old Conley cameras as well. The Conleys were friends of Sears
and he featured their cameras in
some of his catalogs. Of course there was a section on Spring
Valley history, including a fire truck
from 1874, which was cool. Then they had one room set up as an
old-time general store with all the
fixings, and another room set up as a kitchen with stuff in it from
the late 1800s and early 1900s.
They had some of the same antique items in these rooms that we had
seen at Ed's Museum.
The Spring Valley Historical Society also seemed to consist mainly of
older ladies, but at this
museum they were employing two high-school girls as tour guides.
One girl was the guide for
the main floor, and one was the guide for the bottom floor. They
would just kind of do tours
as people came. I really enjoyed it though because you could
tell those two girls were VERY
into the history thing. So maybe the Spring Valley Historical
Society has a future--don't know
about the Wykoff one, though. =(
After lunch, we headed on to our next stop, which was the Hooper-Bowler-Hillstrom
House in
Belle Plaine, MN. It is named after the three families who have
lived there. The reason we were
going to see it, and the reason it was featured in one of Aliece's
books, was because it has a
two-story outhouse! I had made an appointment for 5:00
with a Mrs. Stiles. (The number for the
Belle Plaine Chamber of Commerce rings at her house.) However,
we ended up being an hour late,
due to the fact that there is no direct route from Rochester to Belle
Plaine. When we realized we
were going to be late, we called Mrs. Stiles and asked her if that
would be okay. We told her it was
fine if she couldn't give us the tour that late and that we could just
take a picture from the outside.
But she said she still wanted to give us the tour and she would meet
us there at 6.
We finally made it there and went on our tour. The house was built
in 1871 and the three
families who lived there were all important to the history of Belle
Plaine. There were many
interesting antiques in this house as well. But it was kind of
funny, because they were all
"old hat" to us by that time. In fact, when she took us into
the kitchen to show us the
"appliances" people in those times used, she tried to stump us by picking
up a particular item
and asking us if we knew what it was. Without hesitation,
we replied, "A toaster!" The poor
woman was stunned half to death and asked how we knew that. We
informed her that we
had seen the same toaster twice already that day. =)
Finally we got to the reason we had come: the two-story outhouse.
It was built next to the
main house, with a connecting walkway on the top floor. For those
of you questioning the
logistics of a two-story outhouse, let me tell you that the seats on
the top story were BEHIND
the seats on the bottom story. This outhouse even had a ventilator
shaft running kind of like a
chimney along the back of the structure. (And, no, Aliece did
not find herself in the outhouse,
even after checking both stories.)
We headed back to the hotel fairly tired, but having learned a LOT about
history. (Poor Aliece
probably felt like she was on a school field trip all day!) It
also struck me how cool it was that
so much was being done by a few "little old ladies!" These women
are pretty much single-handedly
preserving the history of their towns. They are volunteers who
give freely of themselves because
they believe that what they're doing is important--even if some days
the only people they get to
share it with are a couple of Atlantans coming to gawk at a dead cat
or a two-story outhouse. =)
And so ends our adventures in Minnesota. I knew that this would
be fairly long since we did
so much there, but hopefully that will help to hold you until Part
5, which will encompass Iowa
and Missouri.