the mellow tigger's musings

We visited Mill City Museum in downtown Minneapolis next to the Mississippi River. They offer an interesting "ride" while sitting in a freight elevator. The elevator would go up and down between the different floors of the original mill, as we listened to the narrative and watched the sights on each floor. It included audio recordings of testimony from people who worked in the mills long ago. On the main floor of the museum, I thought the toy models of the working water flows that turned the mill turbines was also interesting. For me, it added a grounding sense of reality to the history of those old stories. We saw a few old flour sacks in the main exhibit. My mother remembered wearing a dress as a young girl, something sewn for her by her own mother, made of fancier flour sack cloth that was sometimes used back then. I asked some staff about any flour sack exhibit, and they said previously there was a temporary exhibit about it, but they only had those few simple sacks in the main exhibit hall now.

Afterward, we walked to the Guthrie theater, just as they finally opened the doors to the building at 1pm. We walked to the end of the Endless Bridge (a strange and obviously inaccurate name for it), which extends outward 54m/178ft from the face of the building, jutting out towards the Mississippi River. It offers a nice view of the river, the falls, the tops of the trees along the riverside, and another view of the Mill City Museum.

Next, we walked to Owamni by The Sioux Chef. I had a 2pm reservation for lunch. I've wanted to try this restaurant for a long time, because it's gluten-free by nature. Their menu incorporates only foods that were used by native peoples of Minnesota (with occasional dips into native ingredients from other areas). We had the duck breast, green beans, sweet potatoes, and charred vegetable plate. For drinks we had Sweet Wandering and Black Fern teas. I ended up liking the black fern tea, but I think my parents weren't quite as fond of their drinks. The one thing we all agreed was delicious was the white sweet potato with maple chili oil. So very yummy. I need to find someplace to buy white (not red/orange) sweet potatoes and learn how to make that recipe.

They were already at their limit of walking, even though everything was only a few blocks apart. I got their car and picked up them outside the restaurant. After a brief rest at their hotel room, we walked out to the Mary Tyler Moore statue for pictures. It was about 5 blocks from their hotel, but that was another difficult walk for them.

On Friday, they wanted to avoid walking. We drove out to the Conservatory but skipped the Como Zoo. My lower back was starting to complain, so I was content to skip it too. We went out for some gluten-free burgers. My mother needs to be more strict than I do. We got back to my place about 3pm and called it a day.