Date: 3 August 2001 (Friday)

Start: Grand Forks ND AFB FAMCAMP, Grand Forks ND

End: Duluth Tent & Trailer Camp (304 miles)

The temperature was 63f when we arose, with few clouds. The humidity was high, however, and Grand Forks was forecast to get to 90f today. It was definitely time to leave and find a cooler place.

We ate, hooked up, and departed the flat air base, heading east (still) on US-2.

Again, the scenery wasn’t spectacular. It’s all woods except for a few lakes and a few fields (some of sunflowers) between East Grand Forks and Bemidji.

The road is mostly quite good, in fact it’s four-lane most of the way across the state. There wouldn’t seem to be enough traffic to justify it, but there it is.

At Devil’s Lake, and from there east, we ran into a lot of traffic that looked like weekenders coming out to enjoy it.

At Duluth, we wound our way down the hill to I-35 and went north through the city until I-35 terminates at US-61. We continued on that briefly, then the Scenic US-61 drive along the lakeshore, to the campground.

We pulled in, and set up on a very unlevel site. It took some effort to get the trailer level, but we managed. If you walk to the front of the campground, and across the drive, you can view Wisconsin and a lot of Lake Superior.

It was still a little humid, but the temperature was 81f, so it was fairly comfortable.

We ate (hamburgers, and picnic stuff), then decided we could still do some touring of Duluth.

We drove to the Lake Avenue Chamber of Commerce Visitor’s Center and got some information. We left the truck there, and walked the "Lakewalk" to the US Army’s Corp of Engineer’s Visitor’s Center immediately next to the Duluth canal into the harbor. It’s adjacent to the lift bridge to Minnesota Point.

This place has a lot of educational material to introduce people to Great Lakes steamers and the harbors at Duluth and Superior. It has a lot of artifacts and puts out a lot of information. One thing they do is to put out a news sheet each day on the activities taking place in the harbor.

One item in today’s shipping news is that the Arthur M. Anderson arrived today with coal and will leave early tomorrow. This ship is the one that was following the Edmund Fitzgerald the night she sank in November, 1975, with no survivors, in a terrific storm.

We took pictures of the waterfront in the area of the breakwaters and canal, and watched the lift bridge go up and down to admit sailboats and the harbor tour boat.

Then we left to take the scenic drive past our campground and up to Two Harbors. This is a nice, quiet, drive along the shore overlooking Lake Superior. It swings inland a little south of Two Harbors to avoid the ship loading facilities. The Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range Railway owns two docks here to load taconite (used to be iron ore) onto freighters for ports like Detroit.

We went into Two Harbors and into the old downtown. Here, we stumbled onto a good view of the loading docks (no freighters in the harbor today), and the Lake County museum. The museum is housed in an old railroad depot built for the Duluth and Iron Range in 1907 – an imposing sandstone building. Tracks still are installed in front of it, as it is the northern end of a trip on the North Shore Scenic Railroad trips from downtown Duluth.

Next to the museum are sheds over two old steam locomotives, one from the 1880’s era, and the other from the 1950’s – the locomotive the DM&IR called the biggest in the world, and by some measurements, it was. It’s a massive collection of steel parts that must have been amazing to see in action.

The rest of Two Harbors is not too impressive. We left and returned by the same route to the campground. We took a walk across the drive and looked at the lake for a while, then came back to the little house in the woods by the big lake.

Trivia item – Lake Superior could hold all the other great lakes, plus three extra Lake Erie’s. Another – if Lake Superior froze over (it’s happened twice, last in 1997), there would be room for everyone on earth to spread a 12’ by 12’ blanket (why you would want to do this is totally beyond be, but that’s the trivia item).

Now it’s time to settle in. Tomorrow, we’re doing Duluth – the depot, the old whaleback steamer Meteor (which I remember in action in Holland Harbor years ago), maybe the Fitger Brewery complex, and there’s a folk festival in Leif Ericson Park on the waterfront. Looks to be a busy day.