Back To That City the River Splits

Thursday morning, I got up at 4:30 a.m.  Kurtis drove me to the airport at 5:20 and I was through airport security by 6:30.  Whew!  That part always makes me a little bit nervous.  It was only the fourth time I've flown in my 32 years of existence.  Well, I guess I should say my fourth trip flying somewhere.  I suppose that makes it more like my seventh time on an airplane.  Geesh.  Getting all technical on me are we?  Well, I've decided that flying early in the morning is pretty freaking cool.  Here's why:

This photograph doesn't do it justice, but once we were above the cloud cover, the sun was gorgeous and illuminated the clouds in this pink glow.  It was amazing.

This window was a little scratched, but it was so beautiful.  I wish I could have gotten a better shot of it.

I arrived in Denver and waited to meet my sister, but she never showed up.  Her plane was late, and didn't arrive until after boarding our flight to Minneapolis had begun boarding.  I was worried she would miss the plane.  I was so relieved when I saw her get on.  It was too late to try and switch seats in order to sit together, so I got to sit by a two nice men who left me alone most of the flight until we were about to descend into Minneapolis, and the one on the end looked out the window and said, "Is that Snow?"  I smiled and said, "Have you not seen snow before?"  "No, I'm from California."  I found it amusing.  He showed me a picture of his baby and told me he and his friend are going to have fun in Michigan playing in the snow.  Or was it Wisconsin?  I can't remember.  Either way, I hope he has fun.

Today, we drove to St. Paul and toured the Capitol building.  It's immaculately decorated and incredibly ornate.  The tour guide told us they built it that way on purpose so that everyone could experience luxury and see what that looked like.  This is what luxury looks like:

After the capitol tour, we drove over to the Historical Center.  We could have walked, but decided not to because it was snowing.  It wouldn't have been a super short walk either, so I think we made the right decision.  We went to the 1968 exhibit.  It was amazing.  A lot went on during that year that I never realized.  A crazy amount of people died in the Vietnam war, and protest began to escalate and the tension in the nation had to have been astounding.  Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4th (my sister's birthday), and then two months later, on June 5th (my niece's birthday) pretty much immediately after announcing his run for the presidency, Robert Kennedy was shot.  Things like that shock a nation to its very core.  It was probably equivalent to what we went through on September 11, 2001.  It was also an election year.  President Nixon won, and we got to see the first pictures of an Earth rise from space.  Cool things happened, too.  The world is never all bad.  Sometimes we just have look a little harder.

We also went to the exhibit about our nation's greatest generation:  The World War two veterans.  They grew up during the depression and they persevered through World War Two.  They overcame those years to triumph and prosperity throughout the rest of their lives.  The truly are the greatest generation I will ever know, and they deserve to be celebrated.

 My nephews and I made bombs in the factory.

 My arm got tired of cranking the conveyor belt.

 Tanks are always cool to look at.

 This display represented the cinema and the great films produced during this era.  They don't make them like they used to.

 I just had to throw this one in here.  It's the gorgeous St. Paul's Cathedral.  I took this shot as we were leaving the museum parking lot.  How can I not fall in love with a place like this?