Bus to the mall, train in the mall

Two Thursdays ago my son didn't have school so I decided to take him and my daughter on a trip to the Southridge Mall in Greenfield. We also wanted to visit the nearby used kid-stuff store "Once Upon a Child" to look for some new shoes. We didn't have the cargo bike so our only option was the bus. Even if I had had the cargo bike though, I probably wouldn't have used it for this outing. I've biked to Southridge Mall before and the route is not pleasant. It's long (~9 miles) and mostly stroads. 

The bus that gets us to Southridge Mall is the MCTS #76. The nearest stop is about a mile from our house. This is probably further than many people would go by foot to get a bus, especially when traveling with children, but little trips like this are routine now. My son is getting a little big to sit in a stroller, but he rarely objects. Someday he won't physically fit, but for now, a stroller is just the fastest way for the three of us to take quick trips. I could have budgeted more time and let him walk, but I wanted the quick cardio workout and didn't want to spend four times as long getting there.

Before we hit the mall, we went to "Once Upon a Child" (a consignment store for kids stuff) on 76th St in Greendale. It's a 0.4 mile walk from the last stop on the #76 Bus. It's by no means a pleasant place for a stroll, but it was perfectly surmountable thanks to the functional crosswalk signals and decent sidewalks. 

The mall itself was a hoot. For a Thursday morning at 10:00 AM it was relatively busy. It seemed like a lot of people were going there to walk laps, which is kind of cool. It's a little weird to drive to a mall to walk laps in it, but who knows what people's reasons are. Maybe they don't have sidewalks in their neighborhood. Maybe they meet friends there and walk in groups. Maybe they really hate walking in the cold. While mall's certainly aren't a cornerstone of "community-centric urban planning", I do think they breath a little more life than strip malls. 

In the mall you can pay a small fee to take a short (~10min) ride in a train. I saw a few people doing it. We didn't do it. I told my kids we could walk and follow it at a distance. Maybe someday we'll ride it, but they seemed perfectly happy just following it. In my mind, I had already paid for the bus ride here - and that was both fun AND functional.

The bus ride home was uneventful except for the very cute fact that my daughter fell asleep on a bus seat. I strapped her in the stroller and took her spot next to my sun. We read a book together and looked out the window.