Twin City Time

We moved to an RV park in Woodbury, on the east side of St. Paul for a busy week in the Twin Cities. The first stop was at the Mall of America, but sadly we forgot our camera again! We returned later in the week, so we post a photo of the main attraction - a series of high ropes to climb in the amusement area in the center of the mall. Five stories high, both boys climbed to the top and bravely walked the 'plank' to sound the foghorn. We picked up a few essential items while there during the busy Labor Day weekend shopping and left the mall as everything was closing down at 9:30 pm!

The next trip was to see Como Park and go to the zoo. This was on Labor Day and the park was very busy with Minnesotans enjoying a last outing before school schedules began the next day. The Minnesota State Fair was also in full swing on it's last day so people were parking everywhere in the park and walking over. We drove around the large park, enjoying the sights but finding no parking. We nixed that plan and drove over to downtown Minneapolis.

Somewhat deserted on the holiday, we were actually happy to be some of the few browsers and shoppers. Our oldest son has fond memories of visiting the city a few years ago. The architecture of many of the buildings and the skyscrapers still held their fascination for him. He enjoyed showing his little brother the ropes of how to get around the downtown area on the skywalks. To the left of the boys on street level is the sculpture of Mary Tyler Moore preparing to toss her beret into the sky.

We happened across a 'Great Clips' salon that had no waiting, so the guys all got trimmed up! We browsed around the area and took in the sights until things began shutting down around 5 pm, so we took our tired feet back to the truck and the camper.

The next outing was the Science Museum in downtown St. Paul. We arrived early and stayed most of the day with five stories to explore. First was a film on the exploration of the sunken Titanic on an I-max screen. The film featured Russian scientists exploring in specially designed submarines that descended 2 1/2 miles in the icy seas to film the two massive pieces of the sunken vessel and retrieve specimens and artifacts.

We then descended a musical flight of stairs to tour the special exhibit hall. The boys took a couple of extra trips on the flight of stairs to create their own musical rhythms and scales.

Photos are not allowed in this special exhibit. Photos of the Titanic's construction and a model of the phenomenal ship are the centerpieces of the first area. The exhibit presented a detailed history of the period and chronicled life on the great ship as you viewed items salvaged from deep water resting place. They also did a wonderful job of telling many of the personal stories of those traveling on the ship from all walks of life. Each visitor was given a card that told the story of one of the passengers. You got to know your person and imagined their experiences on the voyage and see at the end whether they were among the survivors. It was a terrific enrichment for the boys to understand and appreciate this period of history.

The museum building was awesome architecture located along a winding section of the majestic Mississippi river. Among the many river exhibits was one that showed the beginning headwaters that we had just walked across earlier in month.

The boys were a little more interested in the interactive exhibits such as the barge pilot simulator or the champion fish lift.

The health and body exibiits held our attention for quite a while. One display got a little too interactive for Will as he opened a door over the face of a little girl's picture and she sneezed on him!

The science museum was an excellent investment for fun and enrichment to our traveling home education.

Split Rock Lighthouse

As we started on our drive up the north shore of Lake Superior, we spotted more and more signs of fall color on it's way. Another week or so should be full of color in this entire region. The Split Rock Lighthouse museum had an informative video of the building and operation of the lighthouse. The exhibits presented stories of the shipping and fishing trades in the area and the transition to recreation over the years. The keeper's house has been restored and furnished with authentic antiques from the period when the lighthouse was operating. Guides in period costume provide interesting details of living in the remote area and the work performed. The guide in the kitchen of the keeper's home also provided homebaked gingerbread cookies baked on site in the wood stove - yum! The view of the vast expanse of the lake was intoxicating for us all.

The lighthouse has been carefully restored to it's original form and includes the original Fresnal lens imported from France.
The interior was open for visitors to climb close to the top. The 4-ton lens floats easily on a bath of liquid mercury and consistently rotates for a flashing beacon every 10 seconds, when lit. Now retired, the lighthouse is operated every November 10 to commemorate the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

A view of the master bedroom in the keeper's house shows the comfortable accomodations for the family. Families could only stay during the summer months and had to be transported out by train or by boat before the roadway was constructed.

We took a short trail down to the lakeside. The calm waters contradicted photographs of the much stormier conditions at other times of the year. Storm conditions can cause waves of up to 30 feet, gale force winds of over 60 mph with snow and ice pelting anything in it's path.

On this lovely September afternoon, the lake only held gentle waves lapping the rocks - although with water at 40 F, no one was tempted to swim!

On another path back to the museum, we walked through a wooded area with more hints of fall color. One additional stop at Gooseberry Falls on our return toward Superior.

And one other stop for sustenance. Betty's Pies was irresistable since we had skipped lunch. We all had burgers and sandwiches - and of course had to sample pies. We chose Apple Crisp and Butterfinger Cream from a selection of at least 10 varieties.

The late evening drive along the lakeshore was a very pleasant wind down to the day.

Gitche Gumee

Hard as it was to leave the lovely Bemidji area, we moved along to park at Superior, Wisconsin. The Duluth-Superior area held tremendous surprise for us. Our first outing was to the harbor area where the boys loved climbing on the huge boulders at the entry to the port. The clear, blue expanse of the lake was as beautiful as the ocean views we've seen along our journeys. Again, two former transportation engineers couldn't be more delighted to see the lift bridge that provides Duluth with their trademark emblem.

During our visit to the harbor, we saw four or five 700-1000 ft. long vessels make their passage in or out with the accompanying lifting of the bridge.

Each vessel greeted the bridge operator with a loud sounding of the ship's horn, with the bridge operator returning the greeting. This was a large American cargo ship coming into the harbor.

Once the ship passes, the bridge is lowered for vehicle traffic.

Now it's up again for an outgoing Canadian vessel full of coal.

Inside the visitor's center at the Army Corps of Engineers office, we visited many displays about the harbor's history. the Great Lakes shipping industry, construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and many stories of ships lost over the years. One of the most famous tragedies was the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Craig and Linda couldn't get the Gordon Lightfoot song out of their heads for the whole day!

The boys are operating a model of the lock system. Video presentations and exhibits were very enlightening for the types of raw materials shipped and how the ships are loaded. Full of information and beautiful sights, we returned to the camper to rest up for another view of Lake Superior the next day.

A few of 10,000 lakes

Bemidji, MN is in the northern part of the state and in the heart of many of Minnesota's lakes. We stayed in a lovely campground on one of those lakes, Fox Lake about 8 miles north of the city. One of our first outings was to meet Paul Bunyan and Babe, in a place of honor beside the lake near downtown.

Inside the visitor's center, we were introduced to more of Paul Bunyan's belongings, such as; the giant fishing pole, pocket watch, stocking cap, walking stick, moccasins, etc. We also learned more about the area from the helpful staff. The US Olympic curling team has been from Bemidji for the past two Winter Olympics. The winter ice fishing (with at least 30 inches of solid ice) attracts many winter sportsmen to catch fish attracted to the nearby Mississippi River feeding the lake. We'll have to take their word for it as we are not going to be in the area when the ice fishing season begins! We asked about the filming of 'Grumpy Old Men' and the guide said it was filmed a few hundred miles south - where it was much warmer...yikes!

Since we were at a lake and we had been hauling two tackle boxes around with no fishing poles for 7 months, we decided to buy a couple of poles to try our luck. We're working on tying a snap and swivel on to each line before we can get started.

Cory fished for three days, off and on, and got lots of bites, but no fish. The water was clear enough to see some of the fish. The big ones were not interested in our offerings and the perch were too small to get a good bite on the hook. The weather and lake were beautiful enough to make the fishing fun - even with no catch! We took a drive up to International Falls and into Canada a few miles - just to get our passports stamped and take a look. International Falls didn't have a lot of restaurant choices on Sunday afternoon, but we found Barney's to be open. The picture with the logo looked like a Viking - would never have guessed Barney to be a Viking name, but we enjoyed our plentiful lunch anyway.

We also stopped at Border Bob's to look over the souvenirs, but found none to take along. Having only 400 sq. ft. really helps with paring down shopping choices!

Smokey the Bear offered a great photo stop and was wearing a special 65th anniversary medal for his birthday this year.

We crossed the border into Canada after a prolonged stop at the checkpoint. Our youngest son's Guatemalan passport was apparently not a normal occurrence, so Craig had to go inside the office to show additional paperwork and answer questions. I suppose it's an effort to control human trafficking and/or kidnapping.

As we continued on, water was everywhere and we enjoyed seeing the pontoon planes that advertised access to more remote areas.

The water was a deep blue and calm - very peaceful setting.

We stopped for a few minutes at a roadside park alongside the lake.

Our very friendly Minnesota neighbors provided extra firewood, so we had a blazing fire outside almost every night. With the low temperatures in the 40's, we also enjoyed the warmth!

The sunset views of the lake were stunning. The campground provided kayaks, canoes and water bikes for the guests and a pontoon boat was available for rent. Since we could see all the shoreline from land, we didn't see much reason for the boat, but we enjoyed the kayaks. We paddled across the lake and alongside reeds in the lake.

We made another outing to see the headwaters of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera - so no photos. There were several places along the road where we could see the tiny Mississippi - sometimes with the banks only a yard or two apart. At Lake Itasca, the state park has several displays explaining the Mississippi and the journeys to find the headwaters. The actual headwaters must be even upstream of Lake Itasca, because there are two other lakes that provide tributaries to the upstream end of Lake Itasca. We're more than willing to settle for the designated headwaters however, with the nicely maintained paths. Those that originally charted out the waters mucked their way through knee deep mud and fought mosquitoes in their quest. We're happy that they've made the way easier for the rest of us.