Welcome, new visitors to my blog. I typically write about country life, and as the readers who follow my posts are aware, I live on a ranch in a rural area, remote from most urban settings.
Last weekend I ventured into Minneapolis with a friend. We saw the musical, Guys and Dolls, at the Guthrie Theatre, spent a day at the Minneapolis Art Institute’s special exhibit of Native Women’s Art, and attended the air show, Wings of the North, among other urban adventures.
It’s tough to get used to so much traffic, Minneapolis’ complex interstate system, and limited or expensive parking when my daily drive is usually over gravel roads and parking is never an issue. The only obstacles in my area are slow-moving tractors conveying large equipment from one place to another.
Guthrie Theatre: https://www.guthrietheater.org/
A windowless hotel room, conspired with my touch of vertigo, to disrupt my sense of direction in the city. Thanks to GPS, we got to our destinations, even though I believed west was east the entire time. My internal direction-finder began to function again, as we drove toward home, in bright sunshine.
Minneapolis Art Institute: Hearts of our People Native Women Artists exhibit https://new.artsmia.org/
Wings of the North: https://www.wotn.org/airexpo/
Biplane pictured first. One of the two B-52’s still flying, from WWII, flew over the airshow, pictured second.
The special events were wonderful and I’m glad I was there, but my favorite stops were to the Next Chapter Booksellers https://www.nextchapterbooksellers.com/ and Dunn Bros coffee shop http://www.dunnbrosgrand.com/. I prefer to spend my book dollars in an indie bookstore, rather than online at a commercial giant, like Amazon. There’s nothing like a good cup of coffee and a treat, like this delicious tiramisu, after book shopping.
Both establishments are located across the street from Macalester College https://www.macalester.edu/. The campus is tree-covered, and no doubt storied, for the undergraduates of this liberal arts college. I love walking around college and university campuses when visiting college towns or neighborhoods. It’s fun to imaging having attended there. It’s probably not a surprise that I feel “warm and fuzzy” about higher education. After all, I graduated from two universities and worked for a college in a third town, for nearly forty years.
We stopped at the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Shop in La Mars for a final treat of chocolate cones before heading home. Terrific ice cream and fun little blue bunnies are all over the shop. https://www.bluebunny.com/
LLZ Ranch 