Eric’s Dream

..a free ticket, huge mall, and small towns..

I arrived in Menomonie Wisconsin, which is about an hour east of Minneapolis MN, early last night and got myself a good night sleep at the cheapest hotel I’ve seen in years. The Motel 6 was much cleaner and newer than the garbage hotel I stayed in Mobile last week for over twice as much money. The staff was equally as friendly, but with much more sincerity and charged less than a tank of gas, $40.

I awoke around 8am in hopes of getting to the Metrodome for the tour at 11:00am.  I dragged myself out of bed so that I had plenty of time to get ready and to make the hour drive into downtown.  I though I’d better check with the dome to make sure that the tour was still happening on this Saturday.  I looked online for the telephone number to contact the tour staff, but received an automated greeting describing the tour dates and prices rather than an actual human being.  I guess I wasn’t too surprised considering that this is part of “the new way of life” in today’s world.  I shall label it: Generation Automation!

I’ve come to find out that this is one of a few Saturdays that they don’t have the tour due to the Minnesota Gophers college game.  For some reason, I thought the Gophers were back on campus, but it turns out that is not until next year.

I decided to take my disappointment with me to America’s largest mall, The Mall of America.

With my extremely limited budget, I knew that there would be no spending of monies at this mall of decadence. As different, large, and unique as this mall is with its indoor amusement park and aquarium, I still find this mall to be……well….. a mall.   Maybe this is a gender-biased thing, but to me, a mall is a mall is a mall.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot more stores and a lot more people to watch, but once again…..a mall, is a mall, is a mall.

I spent more time watching a local radio contest than browsing the mall.  A local radio station was holding an “American Idol” type audition; for what, I have no idea.  Either way, it was more entertaining to listen to these hopefuls than to look at all the things I couldn’t purchase.  My plan was to kill the time it took for the Gophers to finish their football game at this mall. I figured four hours in a mall of this caliber would be no problem, but my plan fell short by 3 1/2 hours.  I reluctantly left the mall to head back downtown to see if I could coax the security guard into letting me inside the dome for a few minutes.

I found a parking spot downtown that was free because it was so far away from the stadium.  This was fine because I need to walk more anyways.  I made my way up to the door while mentally rehearsing in my head my pitch to get through the doors for 5 minutes.  While the couple in front of me was getting patted down for entrance into the game, the girl turned around and asked me if I wanted a free ticket.  “Of course,” I said.  I didn’t need to watch the game, but I would like to walk around inside for awhile.  The ticket ended up being 10 rows up on the 40 yard line.  All football fans know the proximity of this seat and it was about as good as it can get.

I will say that I never did go to my seat. It was the start of the 2nd half and the game was already a blow out.  I stood in the endzone entrances to snap a few photos, make a few people nervous with my self-photo antics, and eventually leave.  In total, I watched about 30 minutes of the game before leaving

I headed up I-94 with Fargo, N.D. in mind.  The traffic and scenery were reaching an all time low on this three hour stretch of interstate. I don’t know if it’s because I had seen this stretch of road so many times before or if it was my eagerness to reach my next destination of Aberdeen S.D.  Whatever the reason, I was growing bored and impatient.

About two hours outside of Minneapolis, I saw a church shooting for the sky on the horizon.  Here I was in the middle of miles of sparsely populated land and a church caught my attention.  By this point, I needed to break up the monotony of the car ride so I pulled off the interstate and headed for the church.  I think the town was Freemont, MN.  There were about 3 streets to the entire town.  The business strip included a 4-way stop and about 6 stores, two of which were bars.  As if by design, this towering church overlooked all three streets with the authoritative power that only a church could do.

I spent about 30 minutes in this town checking out the church and businesses.  If you remember correctly, this was very close to the same amount of time spent in the largest mall in America.  I think this speaks volumes.  Maybe it was my empty pockets that dictated these events…. I’m not really sure.

Further up the road, I pulled off the interstate again to roam around the town of Fergus Falls.  It’s a scenic town and I tried to get a few good photos, but once again, the photos don’t do the town justice.

The photo to the right sums up my entire North Dakota experience.  It amounted to about 30 minutes in Fargo.  I snapped the photo while waiting at a stop light and I’m sure the people thought I was strange hanging out the window with a camera, but I think I’m starting to get used to the stares now.

I stopped to eat some Wendy’s and then proceeded to South Dakota, where I’ll spend 3-5 days catching up with family and friends that I haven’t seen in almost ten years.

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