The Mill City Museum was fantastic.
The Mississippi River runs through Minneapolis, with St. Anthony Falls becoming an important source for power in the city's development.
That included providing the power for multiple flour mills.
While the building was originally associated with General Mills, the museum honors the other mills in the area and their history.
The highlight is the Flour Tower tour.
There are tiered seats in an elevator. In that way it is similar to certain amusement park rides, but without any sharp drops.
Different floors tell the history of the mill, using original equipment, film, and narration.
At the end you can enjoy the view from the observation deck.
There is also a movie, Minneapolis in Nineteen Minutes Flat, giving a fun exploration of the city overall with local humorist Kevin Kling.
Just the film and the Flour Tower would be pretty good, but there is so much more.
The displays are amazing, with many opportunities for interaction.
Host to many field trips, there were children running (small) turbines and exploring transportation.
There was a lot of information about wheat, including on running a farm and the issues with feeding the work crew.
There was a baking lab.
There was a play table that was a giant stack of pancakes.
Clearly much of it was designed to appeal to children, but it was a lot of fun for adults.
One thing I found pretty cool was the giant Bisquick box, just on principle, but there was so much more.
There were display windows around it, with information that the giant box itself could not convey.
Then, inside, you could watch classic commercials on screens set up to look like vintage televisions and radios.
Some of the commercials were before my time, but there were things I had forgotten about and suddenly remembered.
Good stuff, Maynard!
COVID: This is mostly inside, except for the courtyard and observation deck, and sometimes more enclosed than others, like in the elevator. You should wear masks. The beautiful thing is that some of the workers were wearing masks, something that has been more and more rare.
Accessibility: They really thrived here.
In addition to ramps and elevators and room for mobility devices in the elevator and theater, there were also subtitles in English and Spanish, a notice about where the subtitles could best be seen, an offer of the text of the subtitles in a handout, and an offer of a warning for loud sounds.
There are programs for financial accessibility.
The accessible bathrooms also function as tornado shelters, something that hasn't come up before, but is nice to know.
They also have an excellent web page on the topic.