Easter was another busy affair that found the Jenkinson fami,y travelling to Duluth on Thursday afternoon to stay at our favourite hotel for a swim, before moving on south to Minneapolis for 3 days. The trip down to Duluth was beautiful again with fine weather and great scenery along the western edge of Lake Superior. With the help of portable DVD players the kids were better at travelling the distance this time and didn't need too many stops along the way. We arrived at the Duluth hotel around 4.30pm - perfect timing for a swim followed by dinner at the local Country Buffet. Thinking that we should walk to the restaraunt as it was only 300m away, the family set off to find a pedetrian crossing to the mall where it is located. No go. There were even signs that tell you no pedstrians are allowed to cross at the traffic lights. No wonder Americans drive everywhere! The fact that it was a 4 lane highway (each way) at dusk with plenty of traffic on the road and hyper children, it might be more prudent to drive after all. More swimming upon returning to the hotel for the older kids (young Paige Marie was plum tuckered out without her afternoon sleep and hit the sack with mum's hair in hand). Eventually Ash and Megan were coerced from the pool at 10pm on the premise that it was adult only time in the pool. Thankfully they went to sleep not long after returning to the rooms. This time we found blackout curtains (must be 1st floor thing) and were able to sleep in relative darkness. Morning saw another big hotel breakfast (waffles) followed by more swimming. We then trusted in our GPS to take us to the next hotel in Minneapolis. Not a good idea. The GPS sent us along backroads to a place called Hermanville, where Jill asked for some directions and found that we had been paralleling the freeway on our slow way to Minne.
Once on the freeway it was the fast track - 70mph or >115km/h - what a great way to eat up the distance. Which was just as well as Paige became increasingly cranky about the travelling and would not sleep. Add to this the VERY heavy rain that set in and traffic that almost tailgates as a matter of course at speeds in excess of 120km/h and it became a little tiring on the nerves for the driver. But even more nerve wracking was yet to come. Arriving in Minneapolis was helped by the rain easing and stopping. The speed however did not seem to abate. Imagine driving through the outer suburbs of a large city with 4-6 lane highways, on-ramps with cars popping in regulrly, off-and ramps peeling off in sweeping curves to who knows where and you are still travelling at excess of 115 km/h! The GPS struggled to keep us up to date and it was not helped by 3 yelling kids in the back drowning out the spoken instructions. The long and short of this was huge sighs of relief all round when we arrived at our hotel - all for different reasons.
This picture was taken so that we could show a police officer where we WANTED to go - just in case!
Being the chivalrous gentleman that I am not I informed Jill she could drive in Minneapolis from then on. Naturally she made it look easy and drove like a native Minnesotan - I hate that (and love her for it). We stayed in Double Tree guest suites at the end of Nicollette Mall in downtown Minneapolis. Nice enough - no pool - but cheap.
After a walk along the mall we decided to try and get back via the skyways that link all buildings in the downtown area so that no-one need walk uotside in the cold winters. We thought that we were heading to target to buy some groceries for dinner, but found ourself at the Target stadium! A wonderful local guided us back to the right area and we headed off home for dinner at a local Italian restaraunt and to celebrate Megan's 6th birthday.
These 'skyways' criss-cross the streets for blocks and blocks of downtown Minneapolis. 
Saturday was all about visiting the Mall of America - the biggest single shopping mall in the US. It also houses the Nickleodeon Universe which is a kids heaven of roller coaster rides, etc. Ash and Megan started rides immeditaely but Paige did not get on them until later when we found Jill could ride with her for free whenever she needed an adult to go on the ride (which was all of them :-D )
The Nickleodeon Universe is a childs dream come true.
The shopper of the family went for a walk to see what he could buy and was very disappointed to find the mall was made up of about 5 kinds of shops repeated 100x over. Very ordinary and rather expensive.
We did find a new place called Wizards Quest? or similar where the kids buy a magic wand and use it to interact with all kind of objects in order to complete certain quests. It would have been more fun if the kids were not exhausted and I was wasn't coming down with their cold in a big way.
Many of the objects would respond to a correctly waved and pointed wand!
We rode back on the same tram we travelled there on, which was fun too. Next day we went for the cheaper (i.e. free) option of the Como zoo and conservatory in st. Pauls. It was quite impressive and presented plenty of chances to get some close-up pictures of animals and flowers. A beautiful setting and one I would recommend to everyone who visits the area. More pictures can be seen at;
http://picasaweb.google.com/jenkoz5/ComoZooStPauls# or click on the title of this blog entry to see another collection. The trip back to Thunder Bay was remarkably quick due to the freeway to Duluth and easy check-out. We are hoping to visit again.
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