Scuplture Garden and Children's Museum

We went to the sculpture garden in Minnesota to see the famous Spoonbridge and Cherry.

(To be honest, I didn't know it was famous until we planned this trip...)

Connor thought the cherry looked pretty tasty.

 

 Along with all the cool sculptures in the garden, there was an artist designed mini-golf course. Each hole was made by a different artist or group of artists. They were very unique.

The boys were looking through the hole in the watering can, waiting for a ball to come out.

 

 

For this hole, the other players got the chose were to stand on the green to block the hole.

 

 This one looked like a giant golf ball from the outside, but inside it was a shrunken replica of the sculpture garden to shoot around. You get to be both giant and small at the same time.

 

Dallin had fun playing.

 

You release the ball into a funnel on this hole..

...and it falls down the pipes and pops up on the green near the hole.

 

 Connor decided he was done being smaller than Dallin,

...so he grew!



 

And then he tried to be bigger than Mckay. It almost worked.

 

This hole was one of my favorites because it reminds me of the Ames room at the St. Louis science center.

The actual golf play on the Ames room hole wasn't great, but it looked really cool.

 

But this one WAS fun to play.  

It's like the old marble labyrinth game where you have to tilt the table to avoid the holes along the way and get the ball in the correct end hole.

 

This one was like foosball with garden gnomes.

 

 This hole looked like a giant ant farm.

 

Dallin and Connor watched this one for a while. It was like a pinball machine.

You putt the ball up behind the house and it rolls back down. The end hole it lands in decides the number of strokes for the hole. Getting the one-stroke hole was really difficult.

 

And those were only our favorites among the two 8-hole courses. It was really fun to see and play.

***

 

 The day after Mckay's conference, we hung around Minnesota for a bit to see their Children's Museum. The boys had a great time, as you could probably guess.

Connor turned the wheel for this conveyor belt to move the block back and forth for about 5 minutes straight. This whole exhibit actually cracked me up. You are supposed to send the blocks down the chute so they can be moved around on conveyor belts on the level below. Then the children "workers" down there put the blocks on the lift back up to the top level so the workers up there can move the blocks on conveyor belts back over to the chute. Then the process starts over. It's a big 5 man job of moving blocks around in a repeating cycle. I watched sweaty children running around back and forth for 20 minutes, working so hard and not making any actual progress. If only kids would work that hard for something that was actually productive.

 

At least they had fun!

 

We played with some fitness exhibits. 

Connor has strong legs and can lift his own body weight.

 

Then we tried the monkey bars. 

Connor can also hold his body weight with his arms.

He started to get a little nervous when he didn't want to let go and drop to the floor.

 

And I guess we didn't take any pictures of Dallin at the children's museum. He was definitely there and definitely enjoyed himself.