A Free Day of Adventure

 Minneapolis, MN

Couples Skate in the All Skate Direction!

The Walker Art Center

Today we took advantage of our NARM Pass and walked over to The Walker Art Center.  There are a couple of new exhibits that we haven't seen yet.  We also haven't explored their permanent collection recently.  

Donna and I peer into Passing Winter - Yayoi Kusam

Office at Night - Edward Hopper (The Nighthawks guy)

There is a great Stanley Whitney exhibit.  I wasn't aware of him before today but his works are fantastic and it's great seeing them all together.  I liked the reflection of the paintings in the floor.

Holidazzle 2024

After our museum visit we headed home and ate some dinner and then walked the skyway to Holidazzle 2024.  Holidazzle is and was a winter festival in Minneapolis.  It has had a 10 year hiatus but it's back this year, in part.  There used to be a parade but now it's a closed street with a lot of vendors and things to do as well as things to do indoors.  We took advantage of this free event to celebrate winter in the winteriest place I have ever lived.

They had Minne-Golf set up to play for free.  It's the same course as we played here but in a different place.

We were headed to the FREE ROLLERSKATING AKA Roll-A-Dazzle sponsored by CenterPoint Energy in an unused business in The City Center Shopping Mall.

We arrived just after they opened so it looks pretty deserted in these photos.

You signed an online waiver, gave them your ID, and Twin Cities Skaters gave you rollerskates!

I ran off and got photos while Donna put on her skates.

This is Donna's "I'm having fun" pose that you can also see here in this skating post.

There are a lot of many opportunities for selfies.

They had a nice seating area set up so you could rest, post on Facebook about skating for free, and tighten your skates.

It turns out those toe stoppers are just for posing.

After skating we bundled up and walked Nicolette Mall.

The mall has a giant chess board and they put scarves on the pieces.

There was a beer and drink tent that we didn't make use of.  A $9 can of beer seemed inappropriate for our Free Day of Adventure.

Fake ice carvings are a thing even when it is 10 degrees out and a real ice carving would survive just fine.  After looking at this again it might be real. The Southern California boy in me just assumed it was fake.

I was hyped for this Holidazzle Rollercoaster but it turned out to be a stationary sled.

As we walked we happened across a giant yeti.

They seemed pretty cool to look at but then we found out...

They were a marionette and we could control them!

The animation looks pretty great considering it is like 5 random people just randomly pulling ropes without any organization.

The Yeti was made from recycled mattresses, which is really cool.

This hoop tunnel was stroller and wheelchair accessible.

There were a few large hour glasses that were interactive.  When you started turning the wheel it triggered a light show with music.

This is what it looks like before you started turning the wheel.

It was a fun day of exploration.  Minneapolis has been treating us great so far.  The weather has been getting colder and we are expecting our first major snow storm today (it's happening as I write this).  That's okay, we don't have to drive anywhere anytime soon.

That's it for today.  If you missed, Skating the Stadium, and didn't click the link above, check it out.  We went rollerblading at US Bank Stadium for NOT FREE!

Darts, $2 Hot Dog & Beer, and Neon

 Las Vegas, NV

A great photo of Donna courtesy of Brenton

I Want To Play Darts

This morning we all (Gordon, Brenton, Donna, and I) got up and got ready for something but we didn't know what.  We discussed what to do and Gordon said he wanted to play darts.  We had played darts together in Florida last year and it was a lot of fun so we all searched for darts downtown and we found that The Gold Spike has, what they call, Cosmic Darts.  We decided to take a chance and headed to Gold Spike to play Cosmic Darts.

At first it just looks like Cosmic Bowling, Bowling but with black lights

But it's way more than that.  You choose a theme on a tablet and that determines the rules of the game and the entire board and area change look.  This one was basically 301 and the bricks behind the dartboard fell down as you approached your target 301 score.

At the end of the game it gives you the results with a cool animation.

Even the dartboard changes when the theme of the game and the rules change.  Each game has a tutorial so it makes it easy.

Also the scoring is automated.

Looks like a normal dartboard right?

Nope!  The dartboard is grey and everything is projected onto it.  I blocked the projection with my hand to show this off.  The darts are real darts and not plastic tipped.

Brenton had fun with the projection mapping on his hat.

It was really fantastic.  It all just worked, mostly.  Sometimes a dart wouldn't register so you had to jab it into the dartboard quickly to get it to score but this didn't happen often.  It was by far the most fun I have had in Vegas for $10 an hour for 4 people.

Cheap Lunch

After 3 hours of darts (yes it was that fun) we headed over to The Downtown Grand.  We wanted to check out another casino and maybe do a bit of gaming.

The Downtown Grand had a little water issue.

Brenton bought us a round of Hot Dogs and tiny cute beers

Cheers to tiny beers!

Some of us played some craps and some of us got a craps tutorial from Gordon.

Some of us won a good bit of money on a lucky hard 10.

None of us bought cigarettes

The Neon Museum

Laster that evening we had tickets for The Neon Museum.  I have been wanting to go for quite a while and our NARM pass didn't let us down.  

The Neon Boneyard was very cool.  Make sure, for reasons, you visit at night.  

That's it for today.  If you missed, A Day of Fancy Costumes, check it out.