I arrived in St. Paul Minnesota, early on Saturday morning for the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) conference. After checking into the hotel and getting a short nap, I attended several presentations and ended the day at their awards dinner. I kept my acceptance of their Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research pretty brief, admitting my surprise at receiving their 2023 Best Discography in Research on Recorded Blues, Soul, R&B, Gospel, or Hip Hop award category for my book, Recorded Solo Concert Spirituals, 1916-2022, because of the high level of competition.

Sorry, no pictures.

Anyway, I got a fairly early start on Sunday morning since I had reservation for a tour of nearby Minneapolis. I lived only a four-hour drive away from Minneapolis for nearly two decades, but only now was I going to get to see the city. I chose the Narrated Scenic Trolley Tour that offered a narrated tour of historic and contemporary city developed on both sides of the Mississippi River. I’ve added some of the pictures I took below:

The map created from all of the pictures I’ve shared at http://singin1.com/piwigo/index.php?/category/Minneapolis-MN-Tour-051924 showed the locations of the pictures, as usual.

If I had more time, I would have visited the museum dedicated to the musician, Prince, who was a Minneapolis native. Unfortunately, I heard a weather forecast calling for a winter storm approaching Glacier National Park, my next destination. Planning to drive there since I was unlikely to be this close anytime soon–and to finally tick that from my bucket list–before Memorial Day weekend meant choosing between the possibility of a storm or the certainty of extreme crowding if I went that weekend or later. So I headed west.