We had a good breakfast at our B&B this morning, but more than that we enjoyed an extended enjoyed conversation with Tom and Karleen. Both have been avid cyclists for many years, with many great stories to tell. We empathize on hearing of their two frustrating visits to Glacier Park, both of which were interrupted by unseasonal severe floods; and were horrified by Karleen's tow serious bike accidents - once when she flipped herself by putting her hand through her front wheel when reaching for her water bottle, and last year when she fractured her hip in a sand accident in Georgia. They're a game couple, and anxious to hit the road again.
It's a beautiful day today - fair skies, easy terrain and mild winds foretend a pleasant ride into Duluth. My knee is still swollen a bit this morning, but better after a day off and an easy ride yesterday. Hopefully it will continue to improve.
The Garden House B&B, in Port Wing. Beautiful place, very bike friendly. Great place to stay.
On Highway 13, in Cloverdale. These were originally two one room schoolhouses - the Harvey School on the left, and the King School on the right. The King School is in its original location but the Harvey school was later relocated beside it to form a two room schoolhouse when the number of children in the area grew. After the schools closed one was converted to a community center.
Lunch break, beside a dead end spur near the Amnicon River. We had a fine picnic of smoked lake trout, cheese curds and wheat thins before lying back and basking in the sun for a spell.
The beautifully restored Davidson Windmill sits in a small park of historic pioneer structures protected by the Old Brule Heritage Society. The windmill was erected here in 1900 by Finnish homesteader Jacob Davidson, where it powered a grainmill until his death in 1926. It stands adjacent to Highway 13, just west of the Amnicon River crossing.
The Eskolin House, a relocated and restored traditional Finnish house built sometime in the first decade of the 1900's. It now sits next to the Davidson Windmill, but originally it stood in the former dairy town of Maple, about 10 miles east of here.
I had never seen or heard of an ore dock, but this decommissioned giant in Superior is an example. Its function was to load iron ore hauled from nearby mines by train onto freighters for shipment to other Great Lake destinations.
The Osaugie Trail looks attractive enough, if you're in no hurry. It's about four miles long, hugging the bank of the industry-scarred bay. After about a half mile of smooth pavement though ut turns to coarse gravel, so we scrapped it and rode on city streets instead.
The huge Fairlawn Mansion, built in 1891 as the modest 42 room family home for oil and timber baron Martin Pattinson. After they moved out in 1918, Fairlawn functioned as an orphanage for the next forty years before it was converted to a museum.
The Ira Bong Bridge (named after the famous World War II fighter pilot who was born near free) is the only bikeable route between Superior and Duluth. It is a huge bridge, over 2 miles long. I appreciated how safe it felt, with its five foot high fencing on the water side,
The ride was about perfect for the circumstance, and about as long and challenging as I was up for. By the time we arrived in Duluth my knee was starting to bother me more again, and I was happy when we pulled into our city center motel. We had taken our time all day, so we didn't arrive until about five. After cleaning up, we walked a few blocks down to a pizza place, Pizza Luce. A nice place, that I was endeared to because the server had a shirt with a bicycle route map on the back, for the Tour de Luce.
After dinner we walked down to the waterfront for a stroll along the boardwalk. What a beautiful city this is! Walking down its steep streets to the lake reminded me of Seattle, and the waterfront boardwalk is a delightful place to stroll. It is a place I hope we can return to some year. Walking became progressively more uncomfortable as we went along though, and it was a bit painful to walk back up the few steep blocks to our room. Not the best.
A huge laker approaches the Duluth ship canal. We were lucky to see this, but I wish we'd have been out just a bit later so we could have seen it navigate the channel. Unfortunately, I failed to take my camera to dinner with us so we took these shots with our iPhone. Not bad, but I think I'm not quite ready to quit carrying around my Panasonic yet.
The Cribs, a mysterious landmark just offshore from Duluth's waterfront. Also known as Uncle Harvey's Museum and the Duluth Ice House, it is the remains of a failed industrial project built in 1919 and abandoned soon after because it couldn't withstand the severe weather conditions on the lake.
This huge ship is a museum piece. A Lake freighter, or laker, it was used to transport bulk cargo from one destination in the Great Lakes to the other - for example, from an ore port such as we saw yesterday in Superior to a refinery further east. I'd never heard of a laker before, but they're unique to the Great Lakes. Most of them are confined to the lakes because they're too large to navigate the locks at the exit to the Saint Lawrence seaway. It is crazy how huge this ship seems when you're alongside it, but it's actually small as lakers go. At only 610' long, it was retired and converted to a museum ship in 1978 because it was too small. The modern standard is 1000' - nearly twice the length of this behemoth.
