Last week brought me to the upper reaches of the Mississippi River - specifically, Minneapolis - for the annual Geological Society of America's annual Fall meeting. The past two years the meeting has been in Denver, Colorado and Portland, Oregon - both cities I had not really spent much time in before the meeting - and Minneapolis was not any different. The only time I had ever been to the Twin Cities was on one of numerous connecting flights out at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with never any time to get into the city.
The city is absolutely one of the coolest cities in America. No, it's not overly gigantic like Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles; rather, it is accessible, walkable, and friendly, but it still has all of the amenities of a city four times its size! One of the coolest things about Minneapolis is that it has one of the world's largest continuous networks of indoor walkways connecting nearly every building in the downtown area. In the winter Minneapolis is hit with arguably some of the nation's coldest temperatures as arctic blasts of air come streaming into the US from Canada. This walkway, called the Skyway, allows anyone to get anywhere they need to go downtown without having to go outside! How I walked away from Minneapolis without getting any of my own photos of the Skwy, I'm not sure!
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| While most of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region is covered by glacial till or glacial outwash, left behind by the Laurentide Ice Sheet as it started its retreat ~20,000 years ago, this part of Wisconsin was left unglaciated (driftless zone) and as a result, many rock outcrops are still seen along the sides of the road. |
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| Downtown Minneapolis |
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| Skyway bridge in downtown Minneapolis (Photo: Wikipedia) |
Being from west Michigan, though, the only trick about Minneapolis is getting there - it is one long schlep down around the southern shore of Lake Michigan and then up through Chicago and through Wisconsin. I thought that once I was in Wisconsin I was pretty much there, but when I checked how much longer I had to drive, I realized I still had another 5 hours to go - I was only halfway there! But the drive through Wisconsin here was beautiful and I was surprised to see rock outcrops still standing proud along the sides of the road. The drive is especially beautiful in the Fall when the leaves are changing colors and on I-94 between Madison, Wisconsin and St. Paul, Minnesota you see acres upon acres of small farm fields nestled right in the valleys between rocky hilltops. It was absolutely one of the most enjoyable car rides I've been on in a very very long time!
I finally got to Minneapolis around 1:00pm (I left Muskegon at 4:30am!), parked my car across the street from my friend, Jojo's apartment, and met her on the corner. Jojo and I have been very close friends since we survived our French classes at the University of Michigan together. Jojo just moved to Minneapolis to start a job and was more than happy for me to share her apartment for the week while I was at my conference. Well, we dropped my things off in her apartment and we went out and had lunch at a Thai restaurant around the corner and did a little daytime walk through the Mill Ruins Park along the Mississippi River. Minneapolis, like all other midwestern cities, thrived off of industry, and its position on the Mississippi River enabled it to be a boomtown of many industries, but primarily lumber and flour. In fact, the old mills of the Gold Medal Flour and Pillsbury companies are still intact, and regional monuments to the lumber era are preserved in the nearby Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway.
That first Saturday afternoon in the city, I quickly ran to the Convention Center - on the opposite side of downtown, but still only 20 minutes walking - to sign in for my meeting and then Jojo and I met up with Laura and Josh, some other Michigan friends, to watch an all-too-nerve-racking football game against Northwestern. From the Michigan Bar (Smalley's) we rode across the river where our friend Andrew met up with us at The Bulldog so I could experience a local favorite: truffle tots!
It wasn't all that late, but I'd been up a very long time and had to get up early for my conference, so our group of friends left The Bulldog and dropped us back off at Jojo's apartment. Since the conference started on Sunday, Jojo had the day off but decided to walk with me toward the conference center and she went into work to do some work. I spent the next few hours sitting in all sorts of interesting Geology-related talks. Around lunchtime, though, I met up with my friend, Lee from Burlington whose advisor was also mine, and she and I met Jojo at a great little crepe restaurant for lunch. It was amazing that the weather was so nice this late in the year, but everyone was enjoying it, wearing their short-sleeves and sunglasses. Beautiful.
There was nothing pressing that Lee or I needed to be back at the conference, so Jojo gave us a little walking tour along Nicolette Mall - a walking mall for pedestrians and buses only - over to Loring Park and across the highway to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden where the famous "Cherry on a Spoon" sculpture can be found. The park is not gigantic, but it is full of really neat pieces of sculpture art. Though I'm not sure what or why the connection, but many of the pieces of art there are done by artists who also have very similar pieces of sculpture work on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. Needless to say, the three of us had a lot of fun taking silly photos and wondering what was the motivation behind some of the sculptures.
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| Oh how I love the fun perspective photo shoots! |
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| Jojo enjoying some air time |
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| Lee having no trouble dangling |
Eventually, though, Lee and I had to get back to the convention center to hear a few more talks and left Jojo to go back to work. The next few days were very similar. Jojo had to work, so we would get up early around the same times and then meet up for dinner later on and go out for drinks at fun bars or restaurants such as the Eagle Bolt Bar (fun sports bar), Dancing Ganesha (great Wednesday night "Date Night" specials), and Crooked Pint Ale House (delicious cheese curds). On Tuesday night, though, the University of Michigan Geology Department - sorry, the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, now (don't get me started) - hosted their annual Alumni reception. Jojo came along with me and crashed the party where we ran into our friend Jess who also came out to Geology Camp with us. We hob-nobbed with the Michigan Geology crew for a while and when things started to wind down we headed out to The Barrio, a nice little Tequila Bar with good food for a late-night snack.
Most of our evenings, when not eating, were spent just hanging out at Jojo's apartment where we had a lot of time to catch up with each others' lives and tell stories and jokes and just have a good time together. On Wednesday, the weather turned a little bit nasty but that night Jojo and I headed back down to the Mill Ruins Park during a break in the weather for some good old fashioned night-time photoshoots in the ruins, but I will save those for my next post since the Mill Ruins are within the confines of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area - which deserves its own post.
The conference finished on Wednesday, so on Thursday while Jojo was at work, I took the day to drive around and explore the area, checking two more National Parks off my list: Mississippi National River and Recreation Area and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway - again, I'll detail these in their own post soon. That night, however, Jojo's boyfriend and my friend from the Michigan Men's Glee Club, Abe, arrived in town and we briefly chatted before going to bed because I was leaving town that next morning but not before we had breakfast at one of the Twin Cities' most famous breakfast joints.
We got up early on Friday and I drove the three of us over to St. Paul where we had a filling breakfast of typical diner fare at Mickey's Diner, a 50s-style art deco rail car which made famous movie appearances in The Mighty Ducks, Jingle all the Way, and my favorite, A Prairie Home Companion which airs numerous live old-time radio shows from the Fitzgerald Theater, just kiddy-corner from the diner. Luckily, the table that was featured in the closing scene of that movie was open so we enjoyed our breakfast there before I drove them back to Minneapolis, dropped them off, and was on my way back to West Michigan.
Minneapolis was a fantastic city - one I felt comfortable in, enjoyed my time in, loved my friends there, and really hope to make it back many more times (if not get a job there!). It's a city that can really be enjoyed in a short period of time, but really deserves more time than any passer-through will probably give it.
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