What do you do when family comes to visit you in Minnesota? As a transplant to Minnesota I get to live with the pleasure of family and friends from out of the state coming to visit me every now and again. Which is great. I love it when people come to visit me. Those of you who are also transplants or who have family that comes to visit from out of state will know that these visits mean that you get to show them around Minnesota. Then if you are like me you think of all the great things to take them to see. If you’re me, that list mainly consists of museums, one of the state's many hiking trails, and finding the best Scandinavian bakery in the area. Those are the kinds of things I come up with to take people to because who wouldn’t want to go to the Minnesota Museum of Transportation or to Minnehaha Falls. However, the inevitable always happens and I end up doing none of those things and spend the time escorting them around the Mall of America. Do not get me wrong, going to the Mall of America every once in a while can be fun for three or four hours. However, it starts to become increasingly less fun once you start hitting hours six and seven; especially when it is the second time you have taken people around it in the span of a week. I feel that at least for me, the novelty of spending the entire day in the Mall of America has been washed away since I live close enough to it that I can go there anytime I want to. Which I do when we are not in the peak times for out of state tourist to be here. So I mainly go in the winter when it’s at the point in the year that I’m looking for an indoor activity since it’s just a bit too cold outside for me to enjoy one of those many parks we have. While I have recently spent a large amount of time showing friends and family around MOA this year I was able to get my sister and her husband to one of those parks with me. During their visit I was able to get them to hike with me at Gooseberry Falls and swim in Lake Superior. All of which my sister spent a lot of time calling after me to be careful as I kept running into Minnesota’s many waters.
