Heading to Sioux City and the Mall of America

Yesterday, I started out my day in Minneapolis, checked out of the hostel, and headed out to the Mall of America. I took a quick video to show you the hostel accommodations just in case you're curious. It's not luxury, it's a hostel, but it does have character.



This next video is just a continuation of the first... showing you around the hostel.



After I checked out of the hostel, I headed out of town to see the world's largest ball of twine rolled by one man. It's apparently not actually the world's largest, but the second largest, but since the actual largest can be added onto by tourists and other people, they don't consider it legit. When I hit the highway, something reminded me of the Mall of America, and I thought that it would be a shame to be in Minneapolis and not ride a roller coaster in the mall. I decided to abandon my plans for the big twine ball, and headed to the mall instead.

When I arrived at the mall, I thought it was a good idea to stop at Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack, eat lunch, and check it out a bit before going to the amusement park. I took some video of this, but like any mall trip, that's not the interesting part... it was boring, so I decided not to post it. Here's some footage of the amusement park in the center of the mall.



It appeared just by looking at the machines that I had to buy a pass for the whole park. I really just wanted to do one ride, so wasn't going to do it. Last minute, I decided to check out the customer service desk just to be sure. It would be a terrible shame to not have ridden a roller coaster based on an assumption, and I'm glad I asked. I bought just the right number of credits for the ride I wanted to take. It's the Sponge Bob Square Pants ride. It is a Nickelodeon park, after all.

I know that sounds lame and wussy, but it was actually one of the better rides at the park. Really fun! Check it out...



Well it turns out that it was, in fact, a ton of fun, and my stomach didn't seem to mind at all. I wanted to take a video on the ride itself, but I was too afraid of dropping my camera and I had no way of anchoring it. That's alright. I'm sure you got the gist.

After the ride, I was about ready to head out. It was already getting later, and I had about four and a half hours to go before South Dakota. There isn't much interesting to say about the rest of my evening. I took a short video to show you all the crazy fog I drove through. Though fog generally isn't that fascinating, I thought I'd post it anyway.



I ended up staying at a Motel 6... definitely a budget option, but you know what's funny? I had no idea they were run by Accor Hotels. Accor is a company that runs hotels through Europe and even Morocco. I have no idea where else, but apparently Motel 6 is also an Accor hotel brand. Funny. Even though I had a clean non-smoking room with wifi, I had some loud smoking neighbors and the smell came in right under the door between our rooms. This morning I found a cigarette butt on my car... and I didn't even complain about their noise or smelliness. Jerks. ;-P

Later on I'll post about my stop in the Badlands today... beautiful! I'm in Rapid City now. Cheers to South Dakota.