Days 11 & 12 (Monday/Tuesday)

On Monday July 19th 2010, we woke up and ate the Baymont Inn continental breakfast. They had a waffle maker and biscuits and gravy next to each other. One clueless guy came up to the waffle maker and started ladling gravy into it, thinking it was waffle batter. He then shut the lid and started cooking it. After a minute, we heard him say to the manager "I think I made a terrible mistake!" She took care of it and was very nice. A few minutes later, the man's wife came down and said "Did you hear about some idiot who put gravy in the....Was that you?!" We were all laughing so hard. After breakfast, we went to the Mall of America in St. Paul, Minnesota. They have just about any store you can imagine, and it is very hard to find places even on a directory. It was HUGE! There was even a bunch of theme park rides inside. The mall was packed with people and we couldn't figure out why. Finally, we saw signs for a new movie called Charlie St. Cloud and discovered that Zac Efron was going to be there that afternoon (he has the main role in the movie). As it got closer to the time that Zac Efron was coming, people kept crowding into any place where they would be able to see him. There were even people who had camped out overnight in line in order to be able to get an autograph.

Here's Amy, Josh and Mom at the entrance to the mall:

Here are the roller coasters inside:

Here is the ferris wheel:

Here's Josh with Spongebob :)

And here's only a small portion of the people waiting to see Zac Efron:

Amy loved the mall because she got to shop at a cute store called Delia's that does not exist anywhere even close to Laramie. After we were finished with the mall (we didn't stay long enough to see Zac Efron), we drove 460 miles to Bismarck, North Dakota. We stopped to see the temple there.

Here's a picture of the temple:

And gorgeous flowers at the temple:

In North Dakota that night, we checked into the Ramada Limited Suites. It was a very nice hotel and we really enjoyed it. The pool was great too.

The next day (Tuesday July 20th 2010), we saw the North Dakota State Capitol Building. The state capitol is the tallest building in North Dakota. It was very different from any other state capitol Mom and Dad had ever seen, so we took a picture:

After that, we drove about 400 miles to Billings, Montana where we checked into the Country Inn & Suites. It was a fantastic hotel with a really nice pool and hot tub. After we swam for a little while, Mom and Dad did a session in the temple.

Here's Dad outside the celestial room in the Billings temple:

When they got back, we ate dinner at Applebee's, then swam again because the first time we went to the pool there were about five crazy kids who were splashing everywhere.