Excursion to the Mill City Museum

It was a beautiful weekend in Minneapolis; a perfect place to be... in the summertime. Living in a hotel makes "getting out of the house" on a weekend more important than ever. Mark suggested the Mill City Museum. It was a great suggestion since neither of us had ever been there. We learned a lot about the city, and more than I care to know about the flour industry.

There's no argument that Minneapolis holds a place among the most beautiful cities in the country. The River Walk was picturesque, and people were out in abundance, walking and biking. We even passed a tour of fifteen or so people on Segues.

Flour mill ruins

After our walk, we headed up to the Farmer's Market, strolled around a bit and then had a delicious lunch of locally grown bison and pork. Then we walked the short distance to the museum.

The "Flour Tower" exhibit took us up and down eight levels of the building, while giving a little history lesson of the mill, ending at the top for a panoramic view of the city.


The museum gallery had many exhibits describing the history of flour-making. One of the things that was strikingly missing, however, was anything connecting the over-consumption of flour to poor health. But why clog up a good story with rain clouds? Any perceived evils of the flour industry were lightly dealt with and mostly covered over with a dose of humor...like the 20-year life span of mill workers (from the time they entered the mill until they exited the world of the living), and the child labor used to keep rats, bats, and snakes out of the grain chutes (most of the time, anyway)...etc.

View of the city from the top of the mill

All in all, it was a great excursion and I would recommend it to everyone. There are some hands-on activities for the kids and even a baking lab where you can taste free samples. Needless to say, I skipped over that part.

Coming back to reality...we're still waiting for news on our motorhome. Hopefully we'll have something more to say about it in the next post.

Have a fabulous week! Now...back to my crocheting.