Plan B Roadtrip

 

Travalon and I were planning to go to Minneapolis for the long weekend, and we were going to stay at a hotel right on the skyway so we could spend all of Sunday wandering through them. When he looked on the official Minneapolis website, the posted skyway hours were until five on Sunday; but just last night he found somewhere else that said they were closed on Sunday. What?? Then why stay at a hotel there? He called the hotel, and they verified that the skyways are in fact closed on Sunday, which seems to be a COVID thing, so he canceled our reservations just in the nick of time.

This morning we got up and watched cartoons, then I remarked that I was still packed, and Travalon quickly found a couple of intriguing hotels in St. Paul, since we had (free (but we made a donation)) reservations for the Como Park Conservatory. One hotel was a Best Western built in an old railroad repair building, which is where we are staying tonight, and the other was a bed and breakfast on a houseboat, where we will stay tomorrow night. It was a cold day, but very sunny, and we hit the road.

We stopped at an antiques mall in Alma Center which had Travalon's two favorite advertising icons:

Dino the Sinclair Dinosaur and Big Boy! Here's a Sinclair sign they were asking $3500 for.

There was also this polar bear outside the antiques shop.

Travalon found a button of the 1955 Black River Falls basketball team, when they were conference champions, but I didn't find anything that interested me at that antiques mall. However, there was another one right across the street, and one woman had religious artifacts (but no rosaries) and also blacklight displays. Do she and I share a brain?? Travalon took some photos.

In the photo below, I purchased the pink glowing plate (which looks more orange in the photo) on the far right side. Someone (my aunt?) recently mentioned that there is antique glass that glows pink when I said I had collected some of the antique glass that glows green... and here it was!

I also bought a cross with the Stations of the Cross around it and a rock that glows under blacklight. The plate was amber when not under blacklight, so I immediately called Richard Bonomo, since he has a set of amber-colored goblets (from an old coworker of mine), but he quickly ascertained that they do not glow under blacklight. However, he said he had some shot glasses that were glowing purple, so we'll have to look into that further.

Travalon and I got to our hotel, then we went ultra mall walking at the Mall of America. They have some strange shops there, like this Psycho Bunny that just seems to sell clothing with the psycho bunny on it.

I looked for rosaries but didn't find any, not even at the huge alpaca shop. (The alpaca shops in the malls in Madison always have rosaries.) We did see the indoor amusement park.

The real restaurants all had long waits, except for a sushi place where Travalon was overjoyed to get non-sushi (katsu pork) and find pachinko games... that don't work. They are for show only.

I had yakisobe, and we both had lychee and lemon martinis. There is also a huge Lego store, and we saw this Lego model of the Titanic.

Then we came back to our hotel and swam. As always, Travalon preferred the hot tub, while I preferred the cold pool. It was fine once you got moving. 

Stay tuned to see what adventures we have in St. Paul tomorrow.

Famous Hat