Road Trip!

IMG_2497, a photo by tracyg00 on Flickr.

Well, the Collings crew headed to the Twin Cities for spring break this year. We drove up on Tuesday of break week and returned on Friday evening. We pulled out of our garage at 8:25 on that Tuesday morning. We were just about to get onto I-90 at 8:31 am, when Jake said - and these are his exact words - "Oh, this ride is so long."

About 7 hours later, we pulled into Bloominton, MN where we stayed at the Radisson that was connected to The Waterpark of America.



Our hotel was about a half mile from the Mall of America, so we ended up going there a few times for meals and shopping. They had a fabulous Lego Store.







And, of course the highlight was the purchase of Lego sets.



Megan's highlight was the American Girl Store.





We had lots of fun at the Water Park.



Here are the boys in the lazy river.





I like this one.



The kids called this particular attraction "The Wipe Out" area (like the TV show Wipe Out). They were pretty fast at crossing that thing after a couple of tries.





The had one big Family Water Slide that I went down with the kids while Darin was working one day. It was 10 stories high and it got going pretty fast. Megan liked it and Jake did not. We decided that this image on the wall summed up our family's experience:



And one last shot on our way out:



We were able to see my friends, Kelli & John, and their two kids. They were kind enough to have us over for dinner on Thursday night and then Kelli and the kids met us at the Children's Museum on Friday morning.



Megan found some crutches to play with in the hospital area of the museum.



This particular crane exhibit was pretty cool. Jake was really good at operating it.



When I walked down the stairs of the "Steel Mill" exhibit, this is what I found.



Megan loved this little guy:



One last bubble for the road.



We hit the road right after the museum and were back in Chicago 6 hours later.