Wednesday Aug 22, 2007
On Wednesday August 8 we journeyed from our campsite south of
Ely to
Soudan Underground Mine State Park. This mine was owned by
U.S. Steel and given to the state of Minnesota when it closed in
the early 1960s. I visited the mine at least once as a kid. It
is the oldest and deepest mine on the Vermilion Range.
We took the elevator down 2400 feet in about 3 minutes, then
took a train trip to an area where the tour guide talked about
the mine, mining, and miners. The tour happens on the 27th
level down, as it is the easiest, and quite like safest, place
to put a large group.
The Huntington Canyon, Utah mine collapse had occurred recently,
and the tour guide, a former miner and the descendant of miners,
turned off the lights and talked about what it would be like to
be those miners. Your light would only last some hours, you
probably wouldn't have food or water. The Soudan mine has deep
holes in it, so if you had been stuck there, you'd have to move
around quite carefully.
I later discussed the dangerous jobs left in our country with
Karen and some of my neighbors. Mining is one of those jobs,
the others we could think of are forestry, fishing and farming.
There are probably others we haven't considered. Some of these
jobs have certainly gotten safer over the years, but they're
still risky, especially compared to my job as a software
engineer in a nice office.
Monday Aug 20, 2007
After our visit to Split
Rock Lighthouse, we headed towards Ely, with our eventual
goal being Soudan. Our maps showed campgrounds along MN 1, so
we figured we'd find a campground along the way.
We didn't see much in the way of campgrounds before Isabella,
and then we were sent on a detour through Superior National
Forest on dirt/gravel roads. This was significantly slower
than MN 1, as going too fast caused us to lose traction, and the
roads themselves were pretty narrow. We saw signs on our detour
pointing towards camping areas, but the detour eventually led us
away from the camping areas and sent us back to MN 1, about
10-15 miles south of Ely.
We stopped at the first campground we saw, a national forest
campground called
South Kawishiwi River. After figuring the campground out
and seeing plenty of sites available, we stopped where the host
was camped and talked to his assistant. We reserved a site and
got a couple of bundles of firewood.
The campground was on the primitive side, is had outhouses and
we had to haul water from the one pump available. This probably
kept out the rowdier folks we some times encounter when camping.
We set up our tent and Karen started dinner. Nick attempted to
start a fire with the fire starting kit he bought at
North West Company Fur Post in Pine City. It was definitely
more difficult than he thought, and he eventually started the
fire using the camp stove lighter. We decided against roasting
marshmallows as it was getting late by the time we finished
dinner. This was a very quiet campground, as we heard very
little going on around us as the evening wore on.
The sun finally disappeared around 10, and we all went to bed.
It often takes me a while to fall asleep in the tent, so I was
listening for animals. I heard loons a few times, and boy, they
are loud! I wonder why they call in the night. Given
how close we were to Ely, I was hoping to hear wolves, but I'm
pretty sure I only heard loons.
After breakfast and tearing down the camp, we decided to hike on
the hiking trail that goes around the camp sites and down by the
lake (although the site was called "South Kawishiwi River" I
later found on maps that we were actually on Birch Lake). We
ended up at a beach for a while, so we all went wading. At a
bulletin board at the beach, I saw a sign that said "Welcome to
the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness" or something similar.
Very cool, as I hadn't been to BWCAW in over 30 years! After
the beach, we hike the trail all the way to the other end, where
we had paid for our campsite and wood. It was a nice hike,
probably about one and a half miles.
We got in the car to leave, and as we pulled around the loop,
discovered that Sam had left his shoes on the ground just
outside the car, so we headed back to the camp site, picked up
Sam's shoes and left for our journey to Soudan.
Monday Aug 20, 2007
On Tuesday afternoon, August 7, we continued up MN 61 to Split Rock
Lighthouse, which is both a Minnesota Historical Society
site and a Minnesota
state park. The light house is on a rocky cliff over Lake
Superior, and is restored to its 1920s appearance. It provided
a light using a Fresnel lens and a foghorn to help ships avoid
the area. We toured the light house, the fog signal building
and the restored keeper's house. One of the tour guides turned
on the fog horn briefly, which was quite loud. He said the real
thing would have been ten times as loud!
When the light house was completed in 1910, the area was quite
remote and supplies were brought to a dock below the light house
and brought up by a winch system and later a train. We did take
a hike down to the lake were the dock had once been, and the
boys played on the shore. Nick stepped into some shallow
puddles of water on the rocks on shore, which were much warmer
than the lake itself.
Monday Aug 20, 2007
After leaving Duluth on Tuesday morning, August 7, we headed up
the north shore of Lake Superior, and stopped in Two Harbors for
lunch. We stopped at a park on Agate Harbor, with a view of an
ore ship being loaded, and a rocky beach for hunting agates.
While Karen fixed a picnic lunch, the boys played on another
beach. After lunch, we walked over to the other beach where
other folks were hunting agates. Unfortunately, they didn't
know much better than we did what a raw agate looks like. So we
each grabbed a few pretty rocks and took them along with us.
Later Karen found something that talked about agates, and I
think she actually found some. Must be her interest in gems for
her beading hobby.
On the way out of town, we stopped back at some old trains we
saw near by and spent five minutes checking them out. That
seemed to be enough for the boys, who were only promised five
minutes to look.
Thursday Aug 16, 2007
After our our
visit to the North West Company Fur Post, we headed towards
Duluth, arriving late in the afternoon. While I might have
liked to stay in one of the hotels in the Canal Park area, they
were full (we should have called ahead). So we ended up at the
Radisson Hotel Duluth
Harborview and paid a little extra to actually get the
harbor view. This turned out well, as Karen wasn't feeling well
and wanted to stay in the room while I took the boys down to the
canal to do some site seeing. Karen got to see some of the big
boats go through the canal and she said it was a nice view.
I took Sam and Nick to the Canal Park area, and they had a good
time chasing sea gulls, dodging waves in the small rocky beach
area next to the canal, watching the Aerial Lift Bridge go up and down, and we got to see a big 1000 foot ore
tanker go out from the harbor into the lake through the canal.
We also went inside to the Army Corps of Engineers facility
there to get some information about the canal. There was a nice
museum in there, but we were running out of time. We also
walked down the trail along the lake towards another beach. And
we saw a pedestrian draw bridge, and made a note to go see the
floating maritime museum the next morning.
So, the next morning, after checking out of the hotel and a stop
at Caribou Coffee, we visited the Great Lakes Floating
Maritime Museum. This consists of the S.S. William A. Irvin
and the US Coast Guard Cutter Sundew. The Irvin was the
flagship of the U.S. Steel fleet when it was built in 1938, and
was 600 feet long. It was retired about 40 years later, as it
couldn't compete with the 1000 foot ships that were out at that
time. We had a good tour from a retired ship hand. The Sundew
was used for about 60 years before being retired, and had,
amongst other things, buoy duty, i.e. tending to the shipping
lane buoys in Lake Superior. It was also and icebreaker, and
that sure looked like cold work!
Our final stops in Duluth were a visit to Duluth Pack to pick up
something we saw in the window that we thought would be great
for a friend, and a brief visit to the Grandma's Marathon
store front, where I picked up a brochure. While I'm not so
thrilled with running marathons these days, they also have a
half marathon, and running along the lake looks pretty good to
me. As for Duluth Pack, I used Duluth pack as a kid and counselor at YMCA Camp Ihduhapi, especially on canoe trips. So the store definitely brought back memories. Also, we had seen the forehead strap used by the voyageurs at the North West Company Fur Post the day before, and I hadn't realized the idea of the forehead strap went so far back in time.
What didn't we see? Lots. The Glensheen Mansion is a
place Karen and I have visited in the past, but we figured the
kids wouldn't appreciate it. There's also a zoo and other sites
we just couldn't fit in, as we were on our way up the north
shore of Lake Superior.
Wednesday Aug 15, 2007
We left Bloomington, Minnesota on Monday August 6 and headed
north to Pine City. I would have gone north on I-35W and
eventually hit I-35 where I-35W and I-35E come together, but
with the bridge collapse the week before, I took I-494 east to
I-35E and then headed north.
So, what's in Pine City? The North West
Company Fur Post, a re-enactment of an 1804 Ojibwe
encampment and nearby fur trading post. Our guide, Winona, an
Ojibwe squaw, showed us the encampment and explained how her
group moved to six different places in a circle over the course
of a year. After this, she took us to the fur company wintering
camp, where she showed us the various living quarters and
store. We discussed the roles of the different workers,
intermarriage between the fur traders and Ojibwe, and Winona
demonstrated starting a fire from a flint and steel. Nick was
quite enthralled (as many 9-year-olds are) with starting the
fire, and he bought himself a fire starting kit at the gift
shop.
While some Minnesota
Historical Society historic sites are not at locations of
actual historic sites, this site actually was a fur trading site
in the early 19th century.
I hadn't visited this site before, and I thought it was quite
nice and informative.
Monday Aug 13, 2007
We got back Sunday afternoon from a summer vacation to Minnesota to visit relatives
and see the sites. I'll have a few blog entries about it.
We left early Friday July 27 and made our way up I-35 to Kansas City. When we did this same drive two summers back, we stayed across I-35 from Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun, so we decided to do the same. However, this time it was a Friday evening, we should have booked a hotel in advance. We did find a room near this area, so we could at least stop driving. We had breakfast Saturday morning at a nearby Waffle House, and then continued north.
We arrived in Bloomington, Minnesota, where I grew up and my mother still lives in the house she and my dad bought around 1955, on Saturday afternoon. We relaxed around the house the rest of the day, and resisted the urges of our boys Nick and Sam to take them to Running Park.
We stayed with my mother until Monday August 6. During that time we saw my cousin Phil's son Henry for the first time, saw Phil and Cheryl, my aunt Marion and uncle Winton, my niece Lisa and nephews Steve and Jeff, my brother Tom, and even my uncle Richard and aunt Janelle from Arizona, who were passing through on their way home from a long summer vacation. The only local relative we didn't see was my sister-in-law Vera, whose work schedule is a bit crazy when the Minnesota Twins are playing a home stand, as she is a manager for the concessions at the Metrodome.
While we were in the Twin Cities, we saw all of these things:
- Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge. After numerous visits to the area over the 18 years we've lived elsewhere, we finally visited just one unit of this wildlife refuge. Very cool.
- Historic Fort Snelling. Nick really loves this place, and the rest of us enjoy it too. During "sick call", Nick got his "broken" arm set, and it made us glad for modern medicine! We learned that Dred Scott and his wife lived at the fort for seven years, and that time was part of the basis for their lawsuit to be declared free persons rather than slaves. The Supreme Court decision against them probably hastened the Civil War.
- Como Zoo. Como Zoo is a free zoo in Como Park in St. Paul. I've been going there for over forty years. In addition to the zoo, Sam really enjoyed the amusement park there. Nick didn't enjoy the amusement park so much, as the rides are geared more towards younger kids.
- Minnesota Zoo. This is the modern zoo in the Twin Cities area. Also very nice.
- Science Museum of Minnesota This is great museum for kids, with lots of hands on exhibits. The boys call this "the dinosaur museum" due to its displays of dinosaurs and the dinosaur heads you can control. We also made it outside for the first time, where they have miniature golf and a place where you can sluice for gems (after you buy a bag of dirt that's seeded with gems).
- Minnehaha Park. We took the light rail from the Mall of America area to Minnehaha Park and back. The train ride itself was a highlight for the kids. At the park, we saw a trickle of water going over the falls when we arrived, as it's been a dry hot summer in Minnesota. We hiked down the creek bed from the falls to the Mississippi River, and saw lots of crayfish and fish in the creek. Towards the river there are some sandstone cliffs where people have been digging caves for decades, and the kids joined in on that. The river was down pretty far. Looking up stream, you can see Lock and Dam No. 1, but there wasn't much activity there, probably due to the tragedy upstream, the I-35W bridge collapse that happened a few days before.
I've probably missed a site in that, but isn't that enough for one week?
