New Year in Duluth

 

Monday-Tuesday, Sept. 6-7

We got up on Monday morning and packed up our camper, used the excellent KOA showers, and hit the road for a drive to Duluth, about 3 hours away. We had a reservation at a campground on the river (I didn't know WHAT river) so we could spend Rosh Hashanah in a place with decent phone reception. We planned to "go to services" via AEMT's livestream Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

We arrived without incident in the late afternoon at River Place Campground. It was, indeed, right smack on the Saint Louis River, only a few miles upstream from where it pours into Lake Superior and Dululth Harbor. Almost all the campers there were seasonal, with porches and lawn ornaments, and they had all the actual waterfront sites. But there was a pier with a table and chairs where I sat for a little while, admiring the serenity of the river. 

Saint Louis River along our campground

There was no one to be found at the office cum bait shop. My instructions had been to ask there for my site number. But there was a list posted on the door and I saw that we had Site 33, so we found it (very easy) and parked ourselves there. It was quiet--many of the seasonal campers were not there, and there was plenty of grass to walk Cassie, so we were very happy and settled ourselves in.

Dinner was early, because I wanted to catch the services at 6:30 central time (they were 7:30 at home.) I sat in the dinette with the laptop set up, and watched the whole thing, sang along with the prayers, etc. This was an improvement from previous years, when this technology was not utilized, but the one upside to Covid is that we can now participate in important events via Zoom, Livestream, or even YouTube (the services could be found on all three.)

Duluth Shipping Channel by Maritime Museum

Tuesday morning, I got myself going in time to catch late services (10:45 my time.) I had touched base with Aimee and Beth, and the three of us had a phone text group going as we all watched services together. That made it a bit more comforting, since I was missing being with family for the New Year. 

When services were over, Joey and I had some lunch. Then we drove to Duluth to be sightseers. My plan had been to take the North Shore Scenic Highway (another All America Road) for as long as we felt like driving. But I was not at all sure where or how to pick it up! I saw in my Duluth tourist book that there was a Maritime Museum run by the Army Corps of Engineers right by the Aerial Lift Bridge, Duluth's landmark. So I felt they could surely tell me where to go, and we'd visit the museum as well.

The Aerial Lift Bridge, built 1905, up to allow the tanker to pass underneath

Unfortunately, we seem to be on a streak of getting to places and finding them closed! The Museum is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. However, the outdoors were open, and there were quite a few people enjoying a beautiful fresh sunny afternoon and watching the shipping lane, which ran in front of the Museum and under the adjacent lift bridge. Just as we arrived, the bridge started going up. We looked to see why, and saw a huge tanker in the harbor coming toward us. We watched as it turned hard to go through the shipping lane under the bridge. It was BIG!!

As it was passing, suddenly a woman came on a loudspeaker from the Museum, and told us all about the ship, which was called the Indiana Harbor. It was 1,000 feet long, 105 feet wide, and was carrying  78,900 tons of iron ore pellets from West Duluth (I didn't catch where the ship was headed.) It was fascinating watching it go past us just a few feet away. After it cleared the bridge, the roadway descended again, and we watched the cars go over. It was super cool.

The Aerial Bridge descending after the ship is through

The Museum might have been closed, but their gift shop was operating out of a trailer next to the building. So i picked up some postcards and magnets, and asked the lady how to find the North Shore highway. Then we got back in the Jeep and drove a few miles until we found Minnesota Highway 61. This tickled me, because Bob Dylan wrote a song called Highway 61 Revisited, and it starts out, "God said to Abraham, kill me a son," and kind of "reimagines" the story of the Akeda. Since we'd just heard that read a few hours earlier as the Torah portion of Rosh Hashanah, I thought it was fun that later in the day, I was on Highway 61. 61 happens to lead right to the North Shore drive. 

So we drove up the scenic road along Lake Superior listening to Bob Dylan on the radio (he grew up in Duluth and is sort of the "favorite son." I also snapped a photo of Bob Dylan Drive later in the day.) The Lake was simply gorgeous--a deep green/blue near the shore and darker farther out. We could see "our" ship, the Indiana Harbor, in the distance. At one point, we pulled over to a scenic overlook/historical marker, and just then a huge rainstorm came through, pelting us. We just sat in the car and waited until it passed over us, and then watched it sail out over the lake. There were actually quite a few rainstorms over the lake, and the clouds were amazing--sun in some places, and dark clouds with rain pouring out of them in others. 

After the rain, I got out to read the historical marker (it marked the site of Buchanan, a settlement in the mid-1800s which disappeared later), and realized that the rocks below allowed us to go down to the very edge of the lake. Our goal had been to find a place to do "tashlich" in Lake Superior. So Joe got out of the Jeep to join me, and we carefully climbed down the rocks and tossed our bread crumbs into the water. Hopefully our sins went with them. But if they did they will now plague a flock of seagulls, who appeared out of nowhere at the very first toss, and squawked and grabbed up all the crumbs as they hit the water's surface.

Lake Superior Shoreline with Storm clouds over Lake

Tashlich on Lake Superior

We continued up the shoreline after sitting in the sun and enjoying the water for a little while longer, but the road took us off the immediate shore at that point, and we decided maybe we should head back south toward home. When we got to the city again, we wanted to find a grocery--we needed a few things as usual. There was construction to foul us up more than once, and that meant we discovered that Duluth has a lakeview park which looks out on the lake and is spectacular! In face, the city really seemed delightful-- it is built much like San Francisco in that the hill it's on is VERY steep, and the higher you go, the better the harbor view. There were trendy shops in the area we found, and I would have loved to park someplace (there seemed to be nowhere to park, really) and walk in that park. Something else to come back for, I guess!

We finally found a Whole Foods Co-op store--much smaller than a regular Whole Foods, but with veggies (which we needed) and some other stuff as well. And after that, we were able to return to our RV.  We did get lost on our way home, and ended up going over a couple of large bridges. Only to discover that crossing the bridge took us back to Wisconsin! I didn't realize that the tip of Wisconsin was there, sharing the port with Duluth. The second bridge brought us back to Minnesota, and it was the GPS announcing "Welcome to Minnesota" which tipped me off! So it was a geography lesson as well.

All day the weather varied from bright and sunny autumn to brief rainy spells. Luckily, we timed our adventures to maximize the sun and not suffer much from the rain. We really enjoyed our afternoon, and felt it was a nice start to our New Year.