Minnesota

  We have been tooling around in Minnesota the last few days.  We have spent an extensive amount of time at the Mall of America of course.  It is huge, with over 500 stores, mini-golf, theme park, aquarium, theaters, and more.  I actually got a little bit of Christmas shopping done.  We didn't get many pictures though.

On the third floor trying to look across.

Looking down.  They have an American Girl, a Lego, and a Peeps store!

Sydney and her French model look.

Sydney getting her new computer set up.

  I managed to drag everyone to the Science Museum of Minnesota and to a bike ride along the Mississippi River.  We only biked about 16 miles of the 2000 miles of bike trails that follow the river.  It was a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon and the parks and trails were full of people.

Some falls in a huge park along the river.

The first locks and dam on the river.

The other side of the locks

Looking down on the locks.  We road across the bridge in the background.

Crossing a bridge to get back.  We had ridden down to and across the bridge in the distance.

  We also went to Minnesota's Largest Candy Store.  It is a little south of Minneapolis in a town called Jordan.  They had lots of different candy and soda, but there jigsaw puzzle collection was really impressive.

The inside of the store. You can kind of see the puzzles along the top.

This was the Root Beer collection.  They had about five more selves like this with other sodas.

The outside of the store,