Northern Minnesota vacation

We went on vacation to Minnesota, and returned on Saturday, hence the lack of recent journal updates. Time to rectify the situation.

I’d visited the Gopher State before, but this was the first time I’d been north of Minneapolis. The plan was to head into the northern part of the state, where the woods are thick and the wildlife is plentiful. We weren’t planning to rough it in a tent — there are some limits — but hopefully we’d get to walk in the woods and along the lakeshores.

After a few days in Minneapolis, we headed for Duluth, on the southwest shore of Lake Superior (aka Gitche Gumee). Through lucky timing, Prairie Home Companion was on MPR as we were driving. We don’t listen to it at home much, but somehow it seemed like the perfect accompaniment to the journey.

Duluth is fairly small, and since peak vacation season hadn’t started yet, it was pretty empty too. The local economy has hit the skids now that there’s not as much call to ship iron ore across the lake, and it’s obviously dependent on tourism. We toured the S.S. William A. Irvin, once the flagship ore-carrying boat of the US Steel fleet. We also had to visit the Great Lakes Aquarium, of course, because it has an excellent river otter exhibit.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Lake Superior is big. You could just about fit England into it. It was the first time I’d seen a lake that stretched out beyond the horizon, had tides and waves, and was big enough to lose a 400m long cargo ship in. It was weird — the lake looked like the ocean, except it wasn’t salty and didn’t have seaweed. (Conversely, Sara’s first experience of the ocean was that it was weird, because it looked like a lake, but it was salty and full of seaweed.)

Sitting on the rocks by the lake late one afternoon, we watched the cold mists rolling in onto the land. To my delight, there was a pair of loons fishing just offshore. In spite of numerous visits to Minnesota, I’d not actually managed to see the official state bird before.

Since Minnesota has 10,000 lakes and plenty of swampy ground, the other state bird is the mosquito. I’d done some research before travelling, and discovered that the best safe mosquito repellent is a solution of around 10-35% DEET in a slow-release polymer of some kind. We’d visited REI Minneapolis and picked some up, along with a can of Permethrin for clothing. So, while we saw a lot of really huge mosquitoes, we managed to come away without a single bite.

After Duluth, we drove up the north shore of Lake Superior to Split Rock Lighthouse. What can I say? It’s a lighthouse. It has a big rotating fresnel lens, state of the art for its day. It has a foghorn building with two big horns sticking out the front.

Then came the journey I’d been waiting for. We drove up to Ely. If you look at a map, you’ll see that it’s about as far northeast as you can go by road. It’s really rather like “Northern Exposure” — log cabins, lakes, tall trees, and the occasional passing moose. We passed a female moose on the way into town; she just stared at us and carried on munching.

Why did I want to go there? Because Ely is home to the International Wolf Center. Minnesota’s the only state in the USA where wolves aren’t actually endangered, and at the Wolf Center you can get a close look at three great plains wolves and two arctic wolves. The great plains wolves are the kind native to Minnesota; surprisingly, timberwolves aren’t found there. (Someone screwed up when naming the sports team.)

The wolves were really beautiful, and very fluffy — although they were beginning to shed their winter fur. I didn’t get to pet them, but I did get to feel some winter wolf fur (from one that had died of natural causes). It was amazingly soft and silky: guard hairs 4-5cm long, with black bands two thirds of the way up to give the coat its color, and warm white underfur. If you had to sleep outdoors in Minnesota in January, you’d need it.

We ate at a restaurant called the Chocolate Moose. You can see it on the right as you look west on Central and Sheridan. The food was excellent — all made from scratch. I felt I had to try something authentically Minnesotan, so I ate walleye coated with wild rice and pan-fried, on a wild rice pilaf.

Ely apparently attracts a lot of Birkenstock-wearing nature lovers, and we’d found it comparatively civilized. Vegetarian food had been easy to find, espresso was everywhere, and the local store had even stocked Red Bull. This changed rapidly as we headed west southwest towards the Iron Range and the Minnesotan accents became thicker.

We stopped off at the Soudan mine. Once an active location for deep mining of high grade iron ore, it’s now a museum and scientific laboratory. The museum part consists of a tour of the mine.

I’ve been down a deep mine before — a coal mine in England. (We used to have them before Thatcher.) Soudan was different, though. Because of the stability of the rock, they had simply hollowed out vast caverns which needed no support structure whatsoever. It was almost like being in a big adventure game.

Naturally, the tour included that compulsory part of every mine tour — turning off all the lights and allowing people to experience total darkness, probably for the first time in their lives. We also got to ride a converted ore wagon.

Being so deep underground, the mine stays a consistent (cold) temperature, and is very moist — so it attracts bats. So I also had a couple of close bat experiences. I flinched the first time I saw something flying towards me, but once I worked out it was just a bat, I was fine. As we emerged blinking into the sunlight, we saw where they nest just inside the lip of the pit.

Our next major stop was at Itasca State Park. Lake Itasca (pronounced eye-tass-cuh) is the origin of the Mississippi river. Legend has it that if you cross the river there, you get good luck. It’s harder than it looks; there’s a path of partially-submerged rocks, but the water flows quite quickly, and the rocks are often slippery with algae.

The trees were very tall; it reminded me almost of the Pacific Northwest, although it was sunnier and less damp…

We stayed in Bemidji (rhymes with “squidgy”), home of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Unfortunately, the good luck we’d had on the rest of the journey meant that there was a lot of accumulated bad luck that needed to be discharged. The process started with heavy rain in Bemidji. I’d been hoping to pet a raccoon at the Paul Bunyan animal world (no, really), but we decided to head back to Minneapolis instead and relax a bit before having dinner with Sara’s family.

The bad luck continued with the flight home, which was delayed two hours. And finally, the taxi back home from the airport broke down in the middle of the highway. Electrical systems died, and the engine wouldn’t start. Another passing taxi stopped, and we moved our stuff to that one for the rest of the journey. I took pity on the driver of the first taxi, and paid him what I remembered the meter having read the last time I’d looked at it. He seemed to be having a hard time believing I wanted to give him money, but I felt he had enough problems to be dealing with without getting stiffed on the fare too.