Zoos Across America Retirement Trip: Day 71

Doing Better

Jul 16, 2013, 7:55 AM

I was awake last night thinking I didn't do the Mall of America justice. The mall was so big if you looked a store up on line it told you where the store was in the mall, but it also told you which parking garage to park in. Of course when we went we had no specific destination in mind so we just pulled up and parked. There were four floors of stores, really three and a half, the fourth floor didn't seem to go all around, looking at the map. There were places for four anchor stores but only three were occupied, Macy's, Nordstrom, and Sears. The Nickelodeon section was where the amusement rides were, there was a roller coaster, a log flume, a ferris wheel, a ride where there were two seat sections on the ends, almost like a barbell and the seat sections went crazy spinning around while the barbell went up and down pivoting in the middle like a seesaw. There were fun looking rides. There was a giant metroplex movie theater, a four story tall Lego robot, he looked like a transformer, and I almost forgot we walked through the American Girl store. It was two floors of American Girl dolls, accessories, a doll beauty salon, and an American Girl Bistro. This was fun to see all the stuff and Steve was not believing the fact that they had beauticians for dolls. Come on dude, these are American Girl dolls! They have EVERYTHING!!! Actually the stuff they have is really nice and I love the message the American Girl dolls send. Then we made a call to the a anonymous person at the end of the phone at the directory board to find a Mall of America store so we could get Spanky a pin. That was pretty much the end of our day!!!!

Minnesota Zoo

Jul 16, 2013, 7:05 PM

As zoos go this was a nice one, but the coolest thing happened while we were there. There were lots of summer camp groups and kids screaming, not just yelling, although a lot of that was going on too, but mostly these little darlings were screaming, and we all know how I love misbehaving children. Anyway we were pretty much done for the day, it was getting hot, we just had a few more exhibits to go. We came to the beavers, there were two of them and while we were watching them, one of the beavers started to chew on a small tree in the habitat. We stood there for maybe five minutes total and we watched this beaver work around the tree and eventually bring it down. Now I don't know about you, but we haven't even seen a lot of beavers at the zoos we have been to so far, but NEVER have I seen them do much more than maybe swim or sleep. This was the coolest things we have seen yet. You can watch his progress in the photos. This was a highlight for sure.