Denver to Minneapolis

The Mall of America is the first thing I see as my Frontier flight descends into the Minneapolis –St. Paul airport. After a long Thursday and little sleep, I arrive in St. Paul for the round two of the political conventions.

After a day of much needed rest, the crew headed to the Excel Energy Center in St. Paul to do a walk through of the new venue. Everything in the small arena is red. A giant monitor behind the small podium projects a waving flag. The stage is boring compared to the democrats’ game show-like set-up. For the most part, everything is in place. Unlike the DNC, people aren’t frantically running around trying to put final touches on the stage and arena.
We weren’t at the site very long. A few of us decided to check out the media party before our Getty team dinner. We programmed the GPS to take us to the Guthrie Theatre. We navigated around all the road closures in St. Paul and finally got onto the freeway. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the theatre – or so we thought. There wasn’t much going on except some weird art miniature golf in a big field of grass. We walked around for a few minutes and finally asked someone where the Guthrie Theatre was. It turns out that the theatre used to be on the site of the mini golf but was torn down 2 years prior and relocated. We were about 5 miles from the new site. With only 30 minutes before our dinner, we blew off the party. Thanks Garmin.

Chip knew of a sculpture park across the street from the mini golf so we visited the famous spoonbridge and cherry sculpture. At least the light was nice.