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Updated 7/26/19
En route to Duluth from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, we were still longingly searching for a fish "pasty" (rhymes with nasty; see the end of our L'Anse Michigan entry for more intel on this local delicacy). Just shy of leaving the UP we stopped at the Randall Bakery, which looked like a place time left behind but was in fact doing a brisk business and they had (yay!) veggie pasties. And they were good!
We planned to meet a friend on July 28th in Glacier National Park in Montana, so we were mostly rushing westward at this point. We didn't spend much time in Duluth - just part of one day, in fact - but it was a pleasant surprise. While from many vantage points, Duluth is an industrial town with huge piles of iron ore and such scattered throughout town, it has some beautiful parts and nice houses overlooking the western tip of Lake Superior.
The weird tower in the middle of the photo is a shot of the areal lift bridge.
The kids playing on these logs seemed like a vision of a time long gone. Now, most kids play on brightly colored manufactured something-or-others. But the retro logs looked just as fun as any Walmart water wing. The beach had seagulls and rip tide warnings, making the whole thing look very ocean-like, except for the complete lack of waves. The sand was slightly reddish in color, perhaps from iron ore, and it absorbed the sun's rays quite effectively, cooking ones' feet to a crisp.
We camped at the Jay Cooke State Park on the outskirts of Duluth, Minnesota, and took in the gorgeous watercourse of the St. Louis River from the swinging bridge that spans it. In downtown Duluth, we were briefly stopped by the rising of the aerial lift bridge (apparently a rare type of bridge) as it let a vessel pass into the bay. Then we drove five or six miles down a breakwater that turns out to be the world's longest freshwater sandbar to Hearding Island State Wildlife Management Area and then to Park Point Recreation Area, where kids played in the lake bobbing on giant logs tossed near the beach from Superior’s storms.
I suspect I could have as much fun on a log in a lake as on a paddle board.
The dalles of the St. Louis river near Jay Cooke State Park. This photo was automatically modified by Google and handed back to me as a suggestion. I really like what the creepy Google Photos did to my picture in this case.
Some people, naive to the possibilities of the world, might not realize the huge variety of animal life to be found in Minnesota. The miniature polar bears you see here.... OK, it's some bizarre and wonderful diorama in someone's yard. We would have never seen it if we hadn't taken a wrong turn between the state park and Duluth. Thank you, whoever you are who put this all together.
The dalles of the St. Louis River, seen from the swinging bridge in Jay Cooke State Park
Some more rapids on the St. Louis River
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