St. Anthony Falls

The kids and I have been meaning to get down to Minneapolis and see St. Anthony Falls, we were going to go after Kieran's basketball game a few weeks ago, but Lex got sick just as we were dropping Kieran off....this past Sunday was around thirty degrees, a good time to go...

Kieran and I had attended a 3rd grade field trip to the Mill City Museum and part of that trip took us to an outdoor overlook of the falls.  Kieran's wanted to visit it ever since...

The falls were the only natural waterfall on the upper Mississippi River until an concrete apron was poured to keep the city from losing the falls in the late 1800s...the city needed the falls to run the mills (hence Minneapolis is the Mill City)...

If you want more on the geologic history of the falls, there are lots of signs in the area describing it...like this one...

Kieran's a bit of a history buff, so he loved reading the signs...

All the kids enjoyed seeing the ruins of a much older Minneapolis...

All the tunnels heading under city makes you wonder what is all there...

Here's Kieran reading another sign...under the Stone Arch Bridge...

Luke really enjoyed learning about the lock (this lock is now closed permanently to prevent Asian carp from reaching the upper Mississippi River basin)...

With little or no snow on the ground, we took a side hike down along the Mississippi, giving us more views of tunnels coming from under the old mills...

And getting us closer to the Stone Arch Bridge...

Turns out, not all ducks fly south for the winter, there were at least 50 ducks hanging out enjoying our warming climate (a new study says more and more robins are no longer migrating or migrating less far south due to the warmer climate)...Lex liked the ducks...

We got as close to the bridge as we could and it was time to head home...

A good day spent outside in January...