Day 79 - 81 (7/21 - 7/23): Minnesota - Home of Prince and...SPAM!!!

From Fargo we drive into the heart of Minnesota and land in Minneapolis...home of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Target Headquarters, Paisley Park!  Downtown Minneapolis is quite beautiful with many great examples of great historical architecture, and event space for all of their major sports teams.  It is difficult to maneuver a large camper van through downtown, but we were able to get a few shots.

This area is called the "Twin Cities" area because St. Paul sits adjacent, similar to Fort Worth & Dallas.  The capital of Minnesota is actually in St. Paul, even though it is a smaller and quieter downtown.

Our main goal here is to go to Paisley Park, Prince's home & studio, located in Chanhassen, MN.  Our friends Roland & Vivian turned us on to the fact that you can take a tour, and it was well worth it!  I was never a Prince "super-fan", but have always loved his music.  The tour really opened my eyes to how super-talented he was in his short life.  Read about it in the link, and if you are in Minneapolis, plan a visit!  No photos allowed until the very last rooms, so here are a few of what we got:

We headed back into town via the "Mall of America"...although we did not want to do any shopping, we just wanted to say we had been to the "Largest Mall in the US"!  It is really crazy...the entire center of the mall is a gigantic amusement park.  They are celebrating Sponge Bob's 25th anniversary though, which is pretty cool - LOVE Sponge Bob!

Barry found this fun place on a website "House of Balls" and we tried to visit, but the artist's studio was unfortunately closed 😞  We were still able to walk around outside.

There is a famous urban waterfall in town called Minnehaha Falls (Minneapolis is, after all, the state of 10,000 Lakes)...it is interesting, but still not as exciting as what we have already seen on this trip 😬

We are more impressed by the art in the city, and are sad that we missed the Keith Haring exhibit at the Walker...it is just too hot to leave Luke in the car again 😓

OK...so our "main attraction" stop in Minneapolis is the SPAM Museum, located in Austin, MN.  Seriously, we are very excited to visit 😆  It's about a 2 hour drive southeast from Minneapolis to get to this home of Hormel.  

Whoever is leading their Marketing & Communications department is doing a great job.  This museum is GREAT!  Not only informative, but fun and interactive (Phew, learned that it is made from pork and not a bunch of other random meats!).  We spent some dough in the store - AIYA!

In addition to us loving SPAM, I have a GF group that is referred to as SPAM (Sue-Phyllis-Amy-Myra)...so I am thinking of my SPAM gals!

GOOD NIGHT!

Miles driven: 294 (Fargo - Minneapolis/St. Paul), 50 (Driving around Minneapolis)