Church vs. State vs. the Dark Knight vs. the Joker: Day Six of Our Anniversary Trip

We spent the majority of our last day in Minneapolis with Stacy (Wade's girlfriend) while Wade worked. Our first stop was Stacy's ultra-cool apartment, where we had the extreme pleasure of meeting Flash the bulldog and Lydia the hairless rat.









Stacy drove us out to Minnehaha Falls, and we walked around for awhile. It was so gorgeous there!











After lunch at Sea Salt, we drove out to St. Paul. Stacy was convinced that we needed to see the capitol building, as well as St. Paul's Cathedral. I'm very grateful for her convictions, as both were well worth the time.

Since Charles Schultz was a St. Paul native, there are Peanuts statues all over the city. We saw this one in a park near the capitol building.



The capitol building was awesome! We decided to head out on our own instead of joining a group for a tour. We almost immediately ran into a very sweet old man who was carrying the same camera I was hauling around. We got to talking a bit, and then I asked him if I could take his picture. (I'm not going to post it here, though, because it's not a very good picture.)

Anyway, here are a few highlights from the capitol building.















We joined a tour group just in time to go to the roof of the building.





(There's nothing like gold horse asses, is there?)

Then we went to the bottom floor of the building. I really liked looking at the portraits of all the Minnesota governors.







Stacy made a friend!



Our next stop was the Cathedral of St. Paul. What a truly amazing place. Since I was raised Catholic, I felt a special sort of affinity for it, even though I am not practicing anymore. It's hard to describe, but let's just say that I can appreciate the beauty and history in such a sacred place and even experience a sense of awe at being in such a place. I just have no desire to return to Catholicism - ever.





This is St. Patrick. He was my favorite out of all the statues there.









We were exhausted by the time we were done at the Cathedral, but we made one last stop: the shoe tree. As you can see, this is a tree with tons of shoes hanging from its branches. I'm not sure what the history of this is, but it's pretty cool to look at.



Stacy was an awesome tour guide. She even dropped us at Wade's to rest up for the evening to come. Without her, we would not have gotten to see St. Paul at all. Thank you, Stacy!

We had a few hours of downtime at Wade's house, so we rested and read. I photographed Wade's extensive book and music collection.





A little later, Roy and I took one last walk so I could get a few photos.





Once Wade was off work and Stacy came over (again), we headed over to the Bad Waitress for our final Minneapolis dinner.







Afterwards, we went to a late showing of The Dark Knight. It was awesome; the only thing that annoyed me was Christian Bale's voice (as Batman). Otherwise, it was a great flick, and I highly recommend it. It may even be my new favorite Batman film, although it's hard to top Batman Returns.

We got home around 1:30 AM and were asleep by 2 AM. And then we were awake four hours later to catch our flight home. We made it to SLC early and then had to sit in the plane for an hour, but other than that, we made it home without a hitch.

Am I happy to be home? Sure, all our stuff is here, as well as our cats and our life. But it's been hard adjusting to reality since we had such a wonderful time in Minneapolis. We have Wade and all of his group (especially Stacy) to thank for showing us a little bit of what the city has to offer. Thank you for having us, Wade. We are so grateful.