Day Six: Twin Lakes to Cloquet, MN (250 mi)

OH MY GOSH!  The Mall of America is exactly what the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was created for!  There simply are not enough superlatives to otherwise describe this Mecca for American consumerism.  If you were guessing how many stores in this shopping phenomenon and guessed 100 you'd be way off; 200? Still wrong; 300? Uh-uh; 400? Nope; 500? Getting close;  540 is the correct answer, if you can believe it.  My daughter-in-law Bekah would think she'd died and gone home to glory to have experienced what we did today.  One store clerk told me of a friend who came from California for a week, specifically to "explore" the Mall of America.  That wasn't enough time!

The center atrium for this 4-story shopping complex is an amusement park!  The bottom level houses one of the nation's largest aquariums.  Lego has a store with these huge displays built entirely of Legos; we're talking 20 ft tall transformers, as an example.  We passed a couple of wall murals that were absolutely breathtaking, made entirely from Legos.  Incredible.  We spent 2 hours here and obviously barely scratched the surface.  If I took a group of students for the next 20 years (spending comparable time) we still would not be able to see all there is to see.


Let me close today's entry with this bit of trivia.  Do you know what geographic feature divides Minneapolis from its "sister" city, St. Paul?  If you guessed the Mississippi River you were absolutely correct.  And you know something that I did not, at least not prior to today's passage through this large, northern urban center.  Incidentally, the crossing of the Mississippi -- yet again -- marks the fifth place on the continent that we've (Veritas) crossed this incredibly important natural passageway.  Gee, I wonder how many other schools in the nation can make that claim!

With the entering of Minnesota we've now added six states to our steadily increasing list of the "lower 48" states that we've visited since the inception of the school in the fall of 2009; seven more to go while on our current expedition!

This is Veritas -- discovering our world, making a difference!