Jack & Stacy's Excellent Adventure!: Minneapolis/St Paul area recap...and goodbye Mandy

We are going to write two posts today since we have been under the "Cone of Silence" since Tuesday. A lot has happened.

We rolled into the St. Paul East RV Park on Wednesday after traveling through miles and miles of corn fields. We have had sweet corn (called "Kandy Korn" here) a couple of times, but are told most of what we've seen is feed corn. There are huge grain elevators every few miles, all connected by train tracks. Some pieces of farm equipment in the fields are as large as a small house.

The RV park is very nice, well-managed and clean. On Wednesday evening, we drove over to the Mall of America (of course, every consumer's first stop!). It houses every retailer known to man, plus a full sized amusement park, aquarium and miniature golf course. It's truly like a city. (Our contribution to the local economy was frozen yogurt.)

Mall of America: Utter chaos...but fun!!

EEEK! Who does this to themselves?!?

On Thursday, we drove into Minneapolis. It is a beautiful, modern city. There is a wide variety of architectural designs, ranging from 100+ year old buildings to modern skyscrapers. We strolled the city for a few hours...down to the river, uptown. Very pretty.

Revisiting the site of Evan's American Idol audition!

Downtown Minneapolis skyline

We decided to go out to Stillwater, an old river town along the St. Croix River, for dinner. It was a gorgeous evening, and we found a great restaurant with a deck overlooking the water. People were out walking and in their boats...there is even a gondola!!!

Stillwater, MN

Wonderful restaurant view of the St Croix River

It was a great day. But it ended on a really sad note.

After returning to the RV, Jack and Mandy took their evening walk (and squirrel hunt... always a squirrel hunt!). An hour or so later, we noticed that Mandy was pretty unresponsive, hadn't eaten her dinner, and looked really sick. We were blessed to find an emergency vet clinic only 5 miles from our campground.

They saw her immediately and determined quickly that she had a malignant tumor on her spleen that had ruptured and she was bleeding internally. Surgery really wasn't an option, so with great sadness we made the choice to put her to sleep.

It wasn't a hard decision, in that we knew (and still know) it was the right one. But it was incredibly painful for both of us to say goodbye to our dear friend and partner on this great adventure. She leaves a big hole in our lives, and this certainly wasn't our plan for this trip.

Here are just a few of our favorite photos of Mandy, our "Little Baby Girl".