Twin City Travels

For my entire adult life I have been interested in traveling to Minnesota.  I can't really explain why.  It's just an area I haven't been.  There aren't too many states in the continental United States that I still need to see.  But, Minnesota and the region to its west is an area of the country I have been dying to explore.

Now I am here and excited! 

So much to see and do.

I have a lot of meetings throughout the area that require me to get around the region.  I love that I'm not just stuck in one part of the city. Since I had to be here for six days, my husband joined me for the beginning part of the trip.  Even though I was in roundtable meetings all day on Friday and some today, I had time in evenings to explore. 

And, the first thing we did was stop by the Mall of Americas.  There was a project there being done by colleagues that I wanted to see.  My friends in MN had put a man in a glass box in the mall and had people vote on things for him to do several times a day.  It was all part of a plan to get people to think about healthy living.  It was a curious project.  When I asked my friends there working the booth (interacting with the mall goers, answering questions), they didn't really know what the long term thought was behind this project.  I was quite curious because I wasn't really sure how watching a man live in a glass box in the mall would change my perspective on healthy living. 

Anyway, I was even more interested in all the walking trails and paths that Minneapolis has to offer.  I wanted to really explore those and see if they were heavily utilized. We were able to go by a few today.

My thought is that you have to have infrastructure (like trails) for people to live active and healthier lives.  But, I also believe that just building trails won't make people walk. 

This is all part of a project I've been working on for my job and I wanted to do a little research on it while here.

Tomorrow I will explore those more!