The Journey 2008: Day 9

We begin day 9 in Minneapolis, MN (well a suburb) and at a place you might have heard of...Mall of America.

This place is huge with its very own indoor theme park, and stores for everyone and everything.

We had to go to the Lego store which had all sorts of different large lego models and structures.

Downtown Minneapolis...Some interesting buildings, and pretty dead since it was a Saturday afternoon.

After checking out the downtown area of Minneapolis we went to John Piper's church, Bethlehem Baptist church, which is right in downtown to hear John Piper preach on Psalm 42. If you wanted to listen to it, or any other sermon that John Piper has given for that matter, they are all available for free on his website at:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/

Check it out.

After Church we headed over to Minneapolis' twin St. Paul which is the capitol of Minnesota. Here is state capitol number 4 on the road trip. If those clouds do not look too inviting that is probably because this was the time we were hearing our very first tornado warning siren. We were just wondering...okay what do we do now? Lucky for us it was a Saturday and we were downtown in an area where there was no one around to ask where to go and what to do.

So we jumped in our car and drove to the St. Paul cathedral because hey, we had wanted to check it out anyway, and what better place to hide out from the possible tornado than a large structure built out of heavy stone.

But of course I had to take a couple of pictures of the clouds and possible tornado before I headed in.

Here Morgan is telling me to stop taking pictures and get inside.

They were finishing up a mass when we walked in, so we sat down for the last few minutes. At the end the priest informed everyone that they could stay as long as they like due to the weather conditions outside. Well everyone just left. I guess they have tornado warnings all the time, and so this must not be anything new for them. We were just scared tourists that didn't know anything about tornadoes besides what we saw in the Wizard of Oz and Twister. We decided to follow everyone else, and we headed out to grab some food.

Here are a couple of shots of our tornado shelter. (AKA St. Paul cathedral)

Here we are at Mickey's Dining Car in downtown St. Paul grabbing some grub. We had heard about this place from one of our favorite shows, 'Feasting on Asphalt' and of course had to check it out. Thanks for the tip, Alton.

As you can see it was good.

Well that ends day 9. A day of fun checking out new cities, eating new places and experiencing new weather conditions. Tomorrow more of the Minneapolis area, and the reason for the whole trip in the first place, Carrie and Tom's wedding.