Today we drove over to St Paul to the Minnesota Science Museum. Unfortunately, they’re closed on Monday. We tried the adjacent Natural History Museum, but it too was closed on Mondays. We then drove a few blocks over to the Capitol, but it is closed to the public due to renovation:
Defeated, we drove to St Louis Park for lunch, refilling an empty propane container along the way.
Tonight we had a hot dog roast in my brother’s back yard:
We will try the museum again tomorrow, after calling to confirm they’re open.
We had a great Shabbos reconnecting with our friends from Saint Louis Park, MN, where we lived when we were first married over a decade ago. Today we moved our RV a bit west to the suburb where my brother lives to park in his driveway.
M bought a new scooter for himself last week, and today modified it to give it a PPG-themed name:
The kids turned Bondi, which we received as a gag gift, into a PPG pilot:
I went for a nice 34 mile ride out west of town, and found an ultralight flying field I may have to try out. Its amazing how quickly the city gives way to rural country:
The catlinite exists in a thin seam, pitched at an 8% angle, under a layer of hard quartzite. The Indians would quarry away the quartzite to get at the catlinite, which can be seen here as the narrow dark layer the the base of the quarry’s back wall:
The loop hike to a few quarry sites was enjoyable:
The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:
We continued east to reach Minneapolis, where we will be spending Shabbos with the community in St Louis Park, where we lived while I attended graduate school.
Good Shabbos from St Louis Park, Minnesota! See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
The main attraction here is the housing of the artifacts from the steamboat Bertrand, which sunk here in 1865 and was found in 1968, her cargo still intact:
This vast roam displays a fraction of the 10,000 cubic feet of cargo recovered, supplies for the gold fields in Montana:
The Bertrand’s paddlewheel flange:
This keg of nails rusted together, then the barrel rotted away, leaving the mass of metal behind:
Miners need lots of shovels:
General goofyness at the visitor center:
This poster shows various birds’ wingspans to scale:
This facility manages both DeSoto and Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuges, so the kids completed the joint workbook and received both badges:
Many of the instruments had impressive internal scrollwork:
A carved neck:
The cello on the left has seam lines near the top of the belly, showing the original profile of the instrument, a viola de gamba made by the Stradivari family in the 1730s:
A Stradivarius violin:
This Stradivarius guitar has its maker’s name carved in the neck:
We stayed at the museum until closing, then drove north to overnight at Royal River Casino outside of Flandreau, South Dakota. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
After nearly two years in the West, it’s amazing how humid it is here. Even though it’s only in the mid 70s at night, the humidity can approach 100%, making everything sticky. Yech.
This morning we left the Walmart of Crete and drove into Lincoln where we visited the National Museum of Roller Skating. As a former USACRS member and competitive speed roller skater, I was interesting in touring the museum:
We spend some time in the lobby area viewing the displays:
To get to the museum, we passed by the offices of USA Rollersports (formerly USACRS):
The kids completed the Junior Ranger workbooks and received their patches:
The Omaha regional office also houses administrative offices for the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. We had already been working on the Underground Railroad Junior Ranger workbooks, which are not associated with any particular location. The kids were able to able to hand the workbooks in here and receive their badges, which tied in nicely with our visit to Nicodemus National Historic Site yesterday:
From the NPS offices, we walked across a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Missouri River from Nebraska to Iowa:
Views of Omaha:
Welcome to Iowa:
The bridge walkway surface indicates where the border is:
We drove north to overnight at the Walmart of Blair, Nebraska, which puts us in position to visit DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge tomorrow. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
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