Minnesoota August 2006 - Lakes, lakes, and more lakes

Lakes, lakes, more lakes and an AWESOME museum

There are a LOT of lakes in this city!!!! Every where you go – it’s amazing. I would venture to say that you can’t live anywhere here without being within a half a mile of a lake or the river. And people walk – and bike – and jog!!!!

I left hotel this morning and went in search of the three FLW houses. Two are within five miles of my hotel and weren’t too difficult to find. They were in secluded, pretty neighborhoods – a lot of twisting and turning and cul de sacs (and LAKES) to maneuver, but I found them. The neighborhoods were upper middle class – the houses weren’t very big – not anywhere near as big as the one in Tulsa. The third house, though, I couldn’t find. I had exact directions, but the street was just not where MAPQUEST said it was. It was on the other side of the river from downtown, but I just couldn’t find it. Checked the website where I had read about it when I got back to hotel and it did mention the difficulty of finding. However, this house has its own website – it’s in the process of being renovated apparently – and must be owned by some foundation – not much info on the site right now. And it was not in a really great part of town – looks like the neighborhood might have been pretty high tone at one time, but has deteriorated – a lot of the houses have been turned into duplexes and fourplexes.

Left there and headed downtown – now I could SEE exactly where I wanted to be, but had a devil of a time getting there!!! And clearly part of the way I was on the “wrong side of the tracks” – or maybe I should say river – it was always in view. Minneapolis has a pretty large Muslim population – saw a good number in this area.

But, I did finally make it to the riverfront area. The museum I went to is the Mill City Museum. Remember that pic I sent yesterday of the General Mills plant – the one in ruins? Well, the museum is in that building. They stopped using it in 1965 – just walked away – left all the equipment. It sat empty for over 30 years – attracting the homeless – and in 1991 it caught fire. It is 9 stories and pretty much all intact and it is an AWESOME museum. Probably one of the best I’ve ever seen – I was there nearly two hours and could easily have stayed another hour, but I was parked in a two hour meter. They have a film as most museums do, but when I went in to the “theatre”, I didn’t see a screen. The theatre turned out to be a big elevator and they take you up and down eight stories – one of the floors does have a screen where you see a short film – other floors have recordings of people who worked in the plant and all of the equipment is still there. And they simulate the fire. It was so COOL!!!! (Haley, remember that oil museum we went to in Tyler – this one reminded me of that).

Then in the exhibit area they have a room where they bake fresh bread – lots of interactive areas for kids – a 15 foot high box of Bisquick – and lots and lots of early advertising memorabilia. And the really cool thing about this museum is the location – right on the Mississippi, of course, which a great view of the Stone Arch Bridge. And it’s right between an upscale downtown apartment building and the VERY upscale Guthrie theatre. Whoever comes to see me while I’m here – we’ll go back there. I would love to see it again.

After that I headed back to the hotel, but decided to take some back roads and explore other neighborhoods. You’re not going to believe this, but I found……………
MORE LAKES!!!!!

This is a very cosmopolitan city – they have done such a wonderful job with the riverside and downtown development – and I know we’re trying to do the same thing in Dallas, but the difference – at least to me – is that here, it’s all average, middle class people. It’s the way they live. I think I could afford one of those FLW houses I saw or an apartment downtown. In Dallas, if you want to live downtown, or uptown, or the West Village – you have to have tons of money. It’s PRETENTIOUSLY upscale, while here it is upscale without being pretentious. Does that make sense?