St. Paul, MN FMCA Convention (Jul 12 - 17)

Sat July 12th—Today about 14 coaches caravanned from Red Wing to St. Paul.

We really got lucky and got parked right across the street from the MN State Fairgrounds where the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) Convention is being held. We arrived about 10:00 a.m. this morning. Our friends, the Mertz’ from Fargo, ND have been coming here to the MN State Fair for many years so they know their way around and a few good places to eat. We had Greek Gyros for lunch today at Dino’s restaurant. So good and filling! Tomorrow morning several of us are going to “Hell’s Kitchen” for breakfast. Don’t know if this is where the TV series got started or not but will find out. We have beautiful blue skies here with puffy white clouds, but it is very windy. We are supposed to have nice weather until Thursday with a high of 80 and low humidity. Good thing as the buildings at the Fairgrounds are not air conditioned!

Sun July 13th—Well the wind is with us again today and it’s beginning to get warmer! Turns out that Hell’s Kitchen in down town Minneapolis is not associated with the TV show of the same name. Good thing that the Mertz’ made reservations for the 6 of us. It was very busy. What a gourmet breakfast we had! I should have taken a picture of our dishes before we ate them! The waitresses wore their PJs to serve us and the hostess that seated us was named “Cyn” (sin). The Mertz’ ordered Toasted Sausage Bread for everyone to share—oh so good. It is a dense bread made with bison sausage, spices, currants, pecans and black coffee. I had Bison Benedict, which was a charred bison flank steak topped with two poached eggs and served with a tangerine-jalapeno hollandaise sauce on toast points. I thought it might be a little spicy with the jalapenos, but they just gave it a nice flavor. Chuck had a similar Eggs Benedict except his had sausage.

Here we are entering Hell’s Kitchen

Waitress in PJs and Group

This is the side of the building by the parking lot. Neat, huh!

We spent a few hours at the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. It is huge! Having the amusement park in the center of the Mall was unusual and here are a few pictures of it.

Roller Coaster Ride in the Middle of the Mall of America

This evening, we went out to dinner at DeGidio’s Italian Restaurant with our Eastern Gourmands Chapter that we had recently . The Campbels’ went with us as our guests. I think there were about 46 people in attendance! We had a great buffet including desert for $8.00 each!

Mon July 14th—Today we attended several seminars. The one I got the most out of was given by Geeks on Tour www.geeksontour.com entitled “Every RVer Needs a Blog”. Now if I could just find more time to take advantage of the things that I learned! I ran into two Crystal Lake friends there too—Nan Cooper and Carol Shafer. Earlier in the day, we sat with Bob Shafer and Rita Durand (Crystal Lake folks) for a seminar about High Speed Internet for RVers given by the same couple. This is the first FMCA Convention that they have attended. This afternoon they opened up the coach displays so that we could walk thru all of the new coaches. We only went into the 3 Discovery coaches that they had there as we kept running into old friends who used to own Discoveries!

Tue July 15th—Today we went on bus trip to Stillwater, MN to see the old Victorian homes there and to learn about the old logging town. We took a paddlewheel boat (replica) trip down the St. Croix River where we had a buffet lunch. It was a VERY hot day and we were grateful for the air conditioning on the bus and boat. We walked the town for a short while going in and out of air conditioned shops and stopped at Lily’s for a milk shake.

Restored Victorian House in Stillwater, MN

Replica Steamboat like the one that we took down the St. Croix River

Wed July 16th—Today we spent roaming thru the vendor booths looking at the Palaster chairs, satellite dishes for RVs, CAT engine display for a few and checking out all of the new coaches. This evening we went to hear the entertainment--Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. They are a band that formed in the late 60's and one of their hits was "Bojangles".

So much to do and so little time!