Wanderung 6

Pursuing Pioneer Pathways from the Potomac to the Pacific

June-August 2004

July 31 - Duluth, Minnesota - Volksmarch and Bike

This was the day we planned to see Duluth. After breakfast we drove to Cloquet's main street to mail off our set of photo letters and continued on into Duluth. We found the box for the Volksmarch and Volksbike at the Willard Munger Inn and signed up for both events. For the walk we had to drive to the middle of town and park near a maritime museum that was the starting point for the walk. We agonized (briefly) over whether we should pay $.25 per half an hour at the city parking lot and have an unlimited amount of time to complete the walk or park in one of the free parking spots that was limited to two hours. We opted, in the end, as you might expect, for the latter and therefore had to be rather on our toes to be sure of completing the 10 kilometer route in 2 hours and avoiding having our car towed away. Given that time limit we did not, of course, have any time for fripperies like that maritime museum or the Vietnam War memorial we saw along our walk, but we did save at least a buck.

The first section of our walk was a boardwalk along the Lake Superior shoreline. This part of the route gave us really great views of the harbor area and out over the lake to our right as well as the downtown area to our left. The sky was a bit hazy out over the water, which gave the lake more of a steely gray cast than the deep blue I had expected, but it was still an unusual sight. After the boardwalk we continued on through some nice park areas beside the lake.

We were, however, disappointed that the reconstructed Lief Ericsson Viking ship in one park was under a big blue sheet of shrink wrap so that we couldn't really see it, but shortly after that we were rewarded by a very pretty rose garden. The roses were in full bloom when we were there and the scent as well as the view of all the blossoms, was heavenly. From the rose garden we plowed straight uphill into town a couple of blocks before turning back toward the city center through a neighborhood with boarded up houses and such. The dilapidated buildings surprised me because they were located so close to the lake and the downtown area, which I would have expected to be a high-demand, high-priced area, but there it was.

Along the way we cut past a hospital with flowers in front and a nice bronze sculpture of a family out front. In the sculpture the parents were swinging a toddler into the air, and that looked just like what we used to do with the kids when they were little. We called it "holle, holle, hutsch" where the "holle holle" is used for the back swing and the "hutsch" part was timed to coincide with swinging the toddler into the air in front of us. It was a simple thing but our boys seemed to like it a lot. Great fun for all concerned, but I don't know what the American name for that is and I didn't see any label for the sculpture that would enlighten me.

Hustling back down the hill to the lakeshore, we almost touched our outward-bound path before veering off past an old train station and walking over to a permanently docked ore boat. The huge, square-ended thing brought back memories to me, because when I was young and we went to swim on the Lake Michigan beaches, we would see these ore boats come one after the other down the lake to feed the Republic and U.S. Steel mills at the southern end of the lake. All the mills on the Illinois side are gone now, I think, although I believe one mill in Gary, Indiana, is still operating, and I almost never see one of the lake freighters go by when look out over Lake Michigan.

Doubling back to Lake Avenue, we followed it out over a lift bridge to its end in a small park on an island and then returned. We would have liked to have walked back on the beach as the instructions stated that was an option, but we didn't do it out at the park and all of the property owners were quite adamant about not letting anyone get access to the beach across their property. Many driveways had "Private Driveway, No Trespassing" signs posted and other "No Trespassing" signs were put on backyard fences, gates, and so forth to reinforce the idea that riffraff like us were not wanted. A couple of yards also had the 10 Commandments prominently posted in their front yards, which I thought was highly ironic. It would be just one little step further to posting a "Jesus Loves You" sign alongside a "Trespassers Shot on Sight" sign, and I expect I'll see even that one of these days.

As we came back across the lift bridge, I stopped in the middle to take some pictures of the channel between the inner harbor and Lake Superior. The channel boasted a total of 3 lighthouses, and I admittedly have a certain weakness for lighthouses (see Wanderung 5). A speedboat obligingly came roaring out the channel while I was taking the picture, so that added some interest to the shot. All of a sudden we heard warning bells and a message over the loudspeakers, "This bridge is becoming operational, please leave now!" Well I'm an obedient citizen, so I scurried off the bridge, but Monika just kind of sauntered along despite my encouragement, saying, "He won't raise the bridge unless I'm off it!" She turned out to be right, but if she had been wrong she would have had a great trip up into the ozone, because that bridge lifted up surprisingly rapidly the moment she stepped onto the Duluth side of it. I hurried around to take a picture of what I envisioned to be a great ore ship or ocean liner of some kind, and was mightily disappointed that they had opened the bridge for a small sailing sloop! Although I yelled up at the bridge operator for more, there was no help for it; the bridge went through all that commotion just so that the sailboat could get its mast from the harbor to the lake intact! I suppose if I had been the owner of the sailboat I would have felt mighty pleased and important, but from the point of view of picture composition, it surely was less than optimal.


 

The free time in our parking space was running out, so we walked diagonally through the municipal parking lot back to street where our truck was patiently waiting for us and climbed in. Monika figured our how to get to a parking space on the bike path while drove back to Interstate 35 and headed back through town. We had decided to join the bike path out in the boondocks so that we wouldn't be cluttering up the rather limited parking lot of the Willard Munger Inn; after all, it wouldn't really matter from whence we started if we ended up completing the same 25 kilometer route. I should mention hereabouts for those made of sterner stuff than we are, that they offered a 50 kilometer bicycle route as an option. Thinking that discretion is truly the better part of valor, a point not well understood by many people under 30 but known by at least some who make it to the AARP age, we choose the shorter route.

The street Monika had found did lead us over the bike path, and turning left onto 123rd street brought us right over to it at ground level. We had the bikes off the truck and were just prepared to shove off when I spotted a "No Parking: All cars towed immediately at owner's expense" sign on a nearby lamppost. So I drove the truck back out to the main road and parked along the shoulder there as at least one other car had done. Upon our return I saw 4 or 5 cars parked on 123rd street, but I had also seen several patches of glass shards from broken car windows in that spot, so I was very confused as to what the real situation was. In any case, we rode off uphill because our instructions had mentioned a restaurant called "The Buffalo House" that was both the turn around point for the bicycle route and a good place to eat. It was noon by this time, and we were seriously hoping for lunch.

The three miles from milepost 140 where we parked to milepost 137 was all gradual uphill, so we were a bit tired and really quite hungry when we finally spotted the signs for the restaurant. For anyone else doing this bike ride, be forewarned that the signs don't tell you how to get to the restaurant, just that it is somewhere in the neighborhood. What you actually do to get to the restaurant is turn right off the trail at the first sign, turn right again when the side trail branches, and when you come out into an open area with a building on your left and a bigger building on the right, the restaurant is the building on the right. We ordered ice water, Cokes, and the "Doc Holiday" a roast beef sandwich with au jus for dipping. Well, when the sandwiches came they were absolutely huge and had an equally huge order of waffle fries with them. We were really hungry, but Monika could not even finish 1/2 of hers and I could not eat more than 1/2 or mine the leftover part of her half. The waitress was nice about giving us take home containers and a Wal Mart bag to carry it all back on the bikes, so we packed one entire sandwich as a leftover, slung it over my handlebars, and headed back down the trail. If you eat there and are normal sized folks who wish to remain normal sized, you might consider splitting one of the entrees rather than buying an entrée for each person.

Be that as it may, we returned to the trail and now started back northeastward toward the inn, an almost constantly downhill stretch. The trail was a converted railroad right of way, so it featured some narrow cuts through dark ledges of rock that felt like miniature canyons as we pedaled through. As we rounded a spur of the hills and came in sight of Duluth, we were still up on the side of the hill so that we had a very nice bird's eye view of the city, the harbor, and that lift bridge that had almost taken Monika on a ride! Going downhill with the wind behind us, that part of the route down to the inn took only a little over a half an hour and we were really flying! Unfortunately, what goes down must come up, as they say (or is it the reverse?), and in our case that meant that we had to pedal back uphill with the wind in our face. That made the pedaling harder, naturally, but at the same time it cooled us off and that was important because we were both putting more energy into the pedaling than we had on the way down. We took a couple of short rests on the way back to milepost 140, but made that stretch in the surprisingly short time of 45 minutes. All together we were out on the trail about two and a half hours, which seemed to be the pace we take these bicycle tours, and we were really tired when we finally returned to the truck and put the bikes in the back. I was happy, however, that we seemed to want to keep almost the same pace; if anything, I wanted to go a tick faster than Monika but I was perfectly happy to let her set a slower pace and kind of kick back, gear down, and pedal along rather effortlessly. That contrasted with our experience in Germany in Wanderung 5, so I concluded that having two very different bikes in Germany had been the real cause of our very different paces on the rides through the Sachsenwald. It was a relief to know that we were also fairly compatible for bike rides. Now if we could only figure out how to get coordinated in rowing the "Mutt and Jeff", we'd have it made!

On our way back we stopped off at the Cloquest Wal Mart; it was a Supercenter and had the bread we were after plus some low fat cheddar cheese, seedless grapes, bananas, and wine coolers (another balanced diet!). They also had gas at $1.77 a gallon, or even 3 cents cheaper if you had some kind of Wal Mart card. Since they were the cheapest place in town that we could find, it would certainly be worthwhile to get that card if you lived in the greater Duluth area.

We talked about our impressions of Duluth as I drove back to camp and was cut off by yet another rude, impatient driver. When we stopped at a traffic light, Monika saw a woman run a red light right in front of us! I also had someone honk angrily at me when I stepped out into the street to take a picture. Goodness. We had also seen more "No Trespassing" "Do Not Enter", and such like warning signs both in Duluth and on the bicycle path than either of us had seen for previous 2 months. When we greeted people while walking or biking, a Volksmarching habit, people acted surprised, guarded and unfriendly, at least at first. As a result of all this we both had a much more unfriendly impression of Duluth than many other places, and I think it particularly suffered in comparison to the friendly, open folks out in North Dakota and Montana. To paraphrase Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, "Gee, Toto, I guess we're not in North Dakota any more!" I thought that Duluth might just be suffering from what I call Big City Syndrome, which is a combination of rude and impatient driving, suspicious and guarded social interactions, and extreme defensiveness and territoriality around one's house and car, but I wasn't sure.

We were pretty tired and dehydrated when we arrived back at camp, so I chugged a couple of bottles of Gatorade, Monika had a wine cooler, and we both ate some of the grapes while we cooled off with the air conditioning. We started to work on the computers as is our usual wont, but Monika decided to take a nap and I changed my mind to jump into bed right beside her. So we slept through dinner, but with that huge lunch I had eaten I didn't miss it at all, and then we both went back to our computer tasks for a couple of hours before having an evening fire and turning in for the night.

Copyright 2004 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog Map Epilog
June 2004
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30
July 2004
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
August 2004
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31

Return to the Wanderungs Homepage.
Sign the Guestbook or Read the Guestbook.
Comments about this site? Email the Webmaster.
Contact Bob and Monika at bob_monika@hotmail.com.