Minnesota Vacation 2015

Me and a Fountain

 

We returned this week from Minnesota where we spent 5 days exploring areas around the Minneapolis area.




Lou in the Knot Garden

 

Our first stop was to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska. The Arboretum is the largest public garden in the Midwest. It is 845 acres of beautifully landscaped gardens, pathways and special exhibits.











LEGO Dragonfly

  



The summer exhibit this year is the "Nature Connects Art with LEGO Bricks which features 26 sculptures made from nearly half a million LEGO bricks. The sculptures were made by the renowned artist Sean Kenny.

Our next stop was to visit The Landing, which was an 88 acre living history museum that depicts life in the Lower Minnesota River Valley from 1840-1890.



General Store: circa 1880





Moon Jellyfish



 







 



















After the Landing, we explored The Mall of America in Bloomington. It was hard not to be overwhelmed with 520 stores and 50 restaurants on 3 floors. The lower floor is devoted to the Sea Life Aquarium. We took the behind the scenes tour of the aquarium which allowed us to actually view the tanks from the top down. Our guide took us into the kitchen where he discussed the detailed feeding schedule as well as provided some shark teeth and skulls for us to pass around.

 

One of the last things we did was explore the Minnesota Zoo. The zoo was an incredible place where animals have a large scale habitat to live in that is very close to what they would experience in the wild. We were amazed at the amount of land that was available for each exhibit.

One of our favorite exhibits was the Prairie Dogs. Our Milwaukee Zoo does not have these animals, so it was fun to see something new. Other exhibits that Milwaukee does not have were Asian Wild Horses, American Eagles and Grey Wolves.

We tried the Mystic Casino buffet and were not disappointed. The desserts were beautiful and plenteous and there was so much variety that we overindulged a bit. We both gained several pounds, but it was well worth it.

We had a great time and would definitely consider visiting our neighbors to the West again some day!