Walking the Mall of America with a New Camera

My Fugifilm camera has served me well, but it's now in a drawer. It requires lithium batteries. Last year while in Romania the original battery died unexpectedly. Since then I've acquired three other batteries for this camera and had trouble with each. Recently I heard a segment on public radio about the problem of the lithium batteries in the Boeing Dream-liners. The information in the story about the problem with the batteries in the planes was exactly like my problem with the camera batteries, and caused me to go camera shopping. So now I have a new little Canon. It takes simple AA batteries, available anywhere. Today was my first big try with it.

The Twin Cities Volkssports Club sponsored a walk today at the Mall of America (MOA). I was out the door a bit after 7 AM (and hurrah!  it was daylight -- spring is coming) and was checked in and ready to walk about 7:45 AM.

We checked in at a table staffed by the club at the Walking Company store.

At this time the Mall of America is quite empty and quiet. It made me remember walking ut. Kiraly in Pecs early in the morning when the only thing that was happening was preparation for the day.

Here are some things I saw early in the morning.

The restaurant sign surely looks as if it is night.

The neon sign on Old Navy produced an interesting reflection on the floor.

The "night light" produced an interesting reflection of a Sale sign from across the hallway. One can sort of see my reflection,while taking this photo, on the lower right.

In walking about I noticed two signs of changes in male culture.

Hats are back! And I'm glad for I think they are really stylish!

Women can now get a blow-dry in malls and even airports and now men can get a shave.

10K requires 10 loops around the Mall. Every time I was on the north side I saw the carousel winking out with its pretty lights. On the 7K loop I took a detour through Nickelodeon Universe, the name of the amusement park in the middle of the MOA.

This carousel has beautiful figures.

Of course horses...

But some very inventive figures

While in this area I also again saw the Home Plate marker.

The Mall of America is built on the site of the former Metropolitan Stadium. I remember seeing baseball games here as well as going to outdoor concerts.

This photo also shows a detail of the new camera -- a date stamp. I used Photoshop to remove this from other photos in this blog entry. Now I need to figure out the camera menu to remove it from the photos as they are shot.

So I spent a good morning doing a 10K at the Mall of America and learning about my new camera.