Day Seven: HOT! HOT! HOT!

I don't know how you guys in Texas and Arizona do it! It is 96 with a heat index of 104, but it feels much hotter than that. Apparently the people here are not used to this weather and they get kind of cranky! Oh, and the state of Minnesota shut down last night after not being able to come to a budget agreement, so the highways have all been left half done. Hopefully for their sake they will be able to come to an agreement.
Other than the weather, it has been fun! We were going to go to the zoo today, but that was one of the things that was closed because of the whole state thing, so we did the next best thing we could find which was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. They have a bunch of neat pieces of "art" there, like the one called "Five Slabs and Two Poles" (they are really creative when it comes to names). The best one is definitely the "Spoonbridge and Cherry." That's a fun one with a water fountain shooting out of it. Then there was the kind of morbid one that had about 28 benches with really strange sayings engraved into the stone. Who knew that some of that stuff was art??
After that, we took a driving tour of the city. We saw the Metrodome where the Vikings play and Target Field where the Twins play, and the Target Center across the street from there where the basketball teams play. We also went back to the university to see it in the day. It is huge! I'm pretty sure that about 3 CCSUs could fit into it! I don't think I would want to be a Golden Gopher, though. Their mascot's name is Goldy. Not really intimidating... Finally on the city tour, we went to the Mill City Museum. They have all kinds of things about the city's history as a milling town. The Gold Medal Flour building is still there, too.
Then we spent the afternoon at Minehaha Falls. It's a city park so it wasn't shut down, which was good. We took a nice walk by the Minehaha Creek which flows into the Mississippi farther down. They were definitely no Niagara Falls, but a nice place to cool down a little, nonetheless.
Later in the day, we had some storms pass through. Tried to get some neat pictures of lightning, but couldn't quite get it. Did get some pretty sunset pictures though.
We liked Minneapolis, but tomorrow we will be off to the middle of nowhere in South Dakota and hopefully making it to Mt. Rushmore by Sunday.

States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Alberta, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan (7/10)