Above and Below Ground Tours

Arrived at Sherwood Forest Campground in Gilbert, MN.  Thought we might find Lake Woebegone of Garrison Keillor's wonderful tales; however, we did find Lake Orebegone (Ore-be-gone)!  Evidently, the miners dug out the ore and now, the hole has filled in with amazing clear water.  It is quite a popular diving spot!

Our below ground tours started at the Soudan Underground Mine with the Physics Lab tour first.  The mine is no longer active with mining but is very active with scientific research.  There are two studies going on currently.  One is on neutrinos; the Fermilab in Chicago shoots neutrinos at the Soudan Physics Lab.  The only way the scientists are able to examine the neutrino is when it collides into something and explodes.  The other study is on dark matter and most of this went way beyond our smidgen of science knowledge.

This is our guide for Lab; he is a Physicist.  The next picture is one of the screens that captures the neutrino!

After being brain boggled, our next tour was the Historical Mine Tour.  Our guide talked about life in the mines in the late 1800's.  Pretty hard life; very little in the way of safety equipment (if you were lucky, you received a candle), the company made it very clear that if you didn't work, you didn't get paid.  Injuries and deaths were commonplace in the mines with no compensation from the company.  In fact, widows and their families had to move out of company housing pretty quickly if the miner died.










This is our Historic tour guide and our "ride" down into the bowels of the earth!

This is Paula's happy face because we're going back to the surface!  We were where the sun don't shine!

After lunch, we continued with our above ground tour.  Biwabik is the home of Honk the Moose; a children's story about two boys who find a moose in their town.  The statue is life size!

Eveleth's claim to fame is the world's largest hockey stick and puck; so, of course, we had to see that for ourselves.

Hibbing was our next stop.  What's so grand about Hibbing?  It's the origin of Greyhound Bus!  We enjoyed the museum - lost almost 2 hours there.

Back to the rig and prep for departure to Bemidji!








 

North Shore of Minnesota

We're camped at Tettegouche State Park - a beautiful park but no dump station here.  Have to do some scouting for a dump station along our route tomorrow.  Anyway, after a night and day of rain, the bugs have "bloomed" and are very pesky!

On Tuesday, we drove north on 61 to Grand Portage National Monument.  Thoroughly enjoyed the Visitor Center and the fort.  There were docents dressed in period costumes and each had an interesting talk about the life and artifacts in the buildings.

Had lunch in Grand Marais at The Pie Place - we tried two soups, the asparagus and the fish/corn chowder.  Good thing there were other people in the restaurant, otherwise, we would have picked up our bowls and licked them clean!

The next morning, we started our day with Betty's Pies!  Actually, we split the veggie omelet and shared one blueberry pancake.  The home made strawberry rhubarb jam was a gourmand's delight!  Yes, just yummy!  Of course, we bought a pie for later.  After all, it is Betty's Pies!!

Drove to Two Harbors and bought an all day museum pass.  A bargain!  We saw 4 museums for the price of 2 and the pass is good for 2 days!  First museum was The Depot Museum, which featured two actual railroad engines; 3 Spot and Yellowstone class, 229.  The Yellowstone class engine is huge! It weighed close to a million pounds when loaded with water and coal.  It's top speed was 45 mph but it could haul as much weight as 4 of today's diesel engines.  Second stop was the Edna G, a floating tug museum.  This tug not only did firefighting duty but de-icing duty on the ore freighters.  Such a small craft compared to the ore freighters.













Third museum was the Light station and B&B!  Beautiful grounds and lighthouse.  The lighthouse is still active!  After a tour of the lighthouse, we headed to the 3M Museum.  What a humble little building for such a major world corporation of today!  Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing (3M) almost didn't make it in the beginning.  The investors had built a factory but had no product!  They kept pouring money into facilities and hands on research to come up with a new type of sandpaper for the new automobile industry.  From sandpaper to developing new products, 3M became a very successful company.



















Viewing all these museums is hungry work!  Split a sandwich at Louise's Place and walked away very satisfied.

Stopped at Gooseberry Falls, which was just spectacular!  All the water rushing and roaring made for great photography!  Saw another one of those signs that makes you shake your head!
















Another lighthouse - this one is another beauty!  Split Rock Lighthouse has its original 3rd order Clamshell Fresnel lens.  It still floats on a bed of mercury and makes very little noise while rotating.  The keeper's house has been restored to the 1920's and is a wonderful peek at that time.





Back at the rig and preparing to move tomorrow to Sherwood Forest Campground in Gilbert.  Who knows what adventure lays ahead?

The Road and The Apostle Islands

On our way to Ashland, Wisconsin, we did a couple of annoying things.  One, we let Carmen, our Garmin, lead us into a park.  She showed a road going through the park and back onto a major thoroughfare.  The park in all of its infinite wisdom, closed the road to through traffic and is only open to foot traffic!  So, we unhitched the car to make the sharp turnaround in the parking lot.  And after 15 minutes, we were back on track.  However, it was a very pretty park that provided Rick with a leg break!  Carmen was not done with us....our next stop was to be a museum and another opportunity to stretch our legs and learn about the local ironworkers.  This museum was mentioned in one of our guidebooks, "Off the Beaten Path."  After circling around the block twice, we decided to continue our journey.  No museum at the address given in the guidebook.  Maybe our guidebook was truly off!!  In any case, we made our way to Ashland, Wisconsin to Kreher Campground, which is a city park located right on Lake Superior.  No icebergs here!

Next morning with filled with bright sunshine and no icebergs!  So, we headed to Bayfield for a cruise to see the Apostle Islands.  There are 20 islands, which is more than the original 12 (perhaps someone couldn't count?).  Anyway, the cruise was thoroughly enjoyable.  A few icebergs in the inner bay, but none in the channels in and around the islands.  Everyone has told us that this winter had been the longest, coldest winter in about 40 years!  One little old lady even told us that Lake Michigan froze solid for the first time in 48 years!  BRRR!!!  Glad we winter in the desert.

While on the cruise, we saw a bald eagle on an iceberg, just waiting for those fishies!  Lots of gulls and cormorants, too.  Just a spectacular day for cruising.

One of the prettiest sights are the Sea Caves on Devil's Island.  The Native Americans called it The Land of Evil Spirits.  The wind and water make strange low moaning sounds at the Sea Caves.  No wonder people called it Devil's Island.

The lighthouse on Raspberry Island is being preserved by the National Parks.  It's a beauty!

This is Captain Jack saying farewell and calm seas until we meet again!


















We also visited the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center.  What a treat this place is!  They have a wonderful exhibit and movie plus a boardwalk.  Upstairs is a huge mural, covering 3 walls, depicting the area and people through time.  To help raise funds, local people paid money to have their faces used in mural.  The young park ranger at the front desk has an uncle and great aunt depicted in the mural as Ojibway peoples of not too long ago.  We lost a couple of hours inside the visitor center!  A must stop and see place!

Asphalt & Lake Tours

A bit breezy and brisk this morning as we started our road trip to Garden, Michigan.  Just outside of Garden is Fayette State Historic Park.  Back in the 1880's, Fayette was known as a company town producing iron.  The State Park finally bought Fayette in 1957 to preserve the buildings and land.
 

This is a shot of the foundry works which sits next to the water.  Ships used to dock directly in front of the foundry to load pig iron and then sail to ports in lower Michigan.  This town survived  in this industry for 20 years then became just a resort town before the State Park made the purchase.  

After touring the remains of Fayette, we hit the road again.  On the quest to see the famous Pictured Rocks from the lake.  We drove back to Munising and purchased our tickets.  The tickets were only half price since we would only be seeing The Castle due to all the icebergs still in the lake!  We decided to go anyway; the sun was shining and the wind very calm.

As with all cruises, we start with safety!  This is one of our guides on the boat demonstrating how to choke yourself with a lifevest.  

This is pretty much what we saw on our cruise.  We were not able to make the Castle due to the ice pack!  According to the crew, this is really unusual for the ice to last this long.  The cruise company did refund our tickets.  This means that the Pictured Rocks are on the "Come Back" list!

The view from our campsite - Lake Superior with icebergs!  Waiting for another magnificient sunset on the lake.

The start of this Blog

We are going to try something new.  A Blog of our adventures. We hope this Blog will help our friends and family keep track of us and answer the questions "Where are you?" "What are you doing now?" "When will you be coming our way?'