A Change of Plans

Today seemed like a very short day. Maybe that’s because we slept in until almost 10 a.m.! This vacation stuff is really getting exhausting!

After our continental breakfast at the Days Inn Mitchell, we packed up and checked out. We filled up the van (Jon is having a hard time figuring out these gas blends out here – we put in “super” 89 octane that was cheaper than the "regular" 87, but the "super" contains 10% ethanol. The van doesn’t seem to mind . . .)

Around noon, we arrived at the world-famous Corn Palace of Mitchell. You might think I’m exaggerating, but there was a push pin map of countries of the world, and they have had many visitors from all over the globe even since May! In fact, the United States map had been restarted on July 7 and we were already the second family from Alliance there!

The Corn Palace contains many murals and decorations, inside and out, made from corn and cornhusks, re-decorated annually. It began in 1892 with the very first Corn Palace. They are already decorating it for 2009, hoping to get it done before the big Corn Festival in August. (I’m kind of glad we won’t be here for that – it was getting all too much “Children of the Corn” for me!)

I was last at the Mitchell Corn Palace in 1987. Here is what it looked like then:

We ate lunch at Arby’s, bought some additional water and Kool-Aid at the Big K-mart, and hit the road. Our original plan called for us to drive over halfway home on Tuesday and arrive back in Alliance on Wednesday evening. But because it was already nearly 1:30 and we hadn’t even left Mitchell yet, we made an executive decision. We decided to extend our vacation by one day and instead just go to Bloomington, MN, tonight to see the Mall of America. (I call it an executive decision because Debbie said it was okay!) Then we plan to finish the drive home on Wednesday and Thursday.

We drove east on I-90 into Minnesota and then north to Minneapolis. We checked into a Super 8 for the night and then went to explore the Mall of America. It is gigundous. (Yes, I know that is not a word, but it fits.) I took this picture while driving - not bad, eh?

There are four levels and the entire mall is built around a huge indoor amusement park. There is an indoor aquarium which we didn’t even get to, a huge Lego Imagination Center that had Jon and Daniel drooling, a Disney Store, a kitchen gadget store which had Debbie drooling, a game store with dozens of versions of Monopoly, and 2 food courts, which had us all drooling because we were very hungry by this point. Jon had the Chinese (Panda Express), Debbie, Daniel and Bethany the Mexican (Taco Bell) and Katherine the American (Burger King)

Those are all various Monopoly versions in the pictures above! I like how Bethany's face matches Ralphie's from "Christmas Story Monopoly". That was a complete accident!

We capped the night off by riding some rides at the Nickolodeon Universe Amusement Park – we all rode the indoor log ride which was A LOT of fun, Daniel rode a couple of coasters and the girls did a mini-coaster and swings.

The only bummer was that by the time we were done, the place was closing and we missed out on eating at the Nestle Toll House store which we were really looking forward to. Oh well, I guess you have to save something for next time!

Upon our return to the Super 8, we put the kids to bed and Debbie and Jon got to slip off to the hot tub for a short time. Tomorrow we have to log some serious miles!