Minnesota - Day 18 - east to Lake Superior, south to Duluth

Cloquet/Duluth KOA, Cloquet

Sunday, 18 September 2022

The lack of services at last night's campground continued this morning when I tried to dump our trash at the campground's dumpster, only to discover that it was very nearly inaccessible by RV.  I guess they expect people to all be using trailers or 5th wheels and so have a separate vehicle.  I had to drive in to a small area, make a u-turn in that small area, and still had to walk through mud to put my garbage bag in the dumpster.  I was glad once again that I'd bought new rubber boots.

On our first walk early this morning, it was dry and warmish.  But when we stopped in Cook for a walk before leaving, it had gotten much cooler and had rained.  The reason I didn't take Dext out that 2nd time at the campground was that I could hear someone shooting not far from the campground.  I have no faith in anyone with a gun unless I can see where they're pointing the thing - and I was afraid this idiot (who shouldn't have been shooting so close to human habitations in my opinion) might aim wrong and get my sweet puppy.  So we went to Cook.

today's route

As I tried to leave Cook, I realized I'd left a line or two out of the driving directions when I copied them from Google.  I had to drive all the way south to the first turning based on my memory of what the route was supposed to be like.

I passed a sign telling me to turn left to the Laurentian Divide, which I hadn't heard of.  But it's seriously important because it's the height of land that separates North America between the waters that flow through the Hudson Bay watershed that mostly flows to the Arctic Ocean in the north, from the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Waterway that flows to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, from the Mississippi River watershed that flows to the Gulf of Mexico in the south.  That's a whole lot of separating.

Minnesota has a city named Virginia, pop. 8,712, and a town called Fairbanks.

I crossed the Rice River 3 times, and the Beaver River.  I saw a Canada goose standing on top of a beaver lodge in a small lake.  Where the Beaver River ran into Lake Superior, I stopped at a rest area that really didn't want us there - we had to dodge several areas with signs saying "no dogs."  But I saw several informational signs there that were interesting.

part of the sign

text enlarged

What I thought most interesting about this sign was the trail's name: Gitchi-Gami.  And the text said the name was from the Ojibwe meaning "big water."  And of course that reminded me of that Longfellow poem that starts "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water," which is just about all I can remember of that poem.  I wondered if Longfellow had the name wrong, or if it's just the usual migration of a name over the space of time.

Then there's this one about the economy, both historic and present, of this area.

This is the sign.
Enlargements below.

And then there was this one that's more about the scenery.

This is the sign.
Enlargements below.

From this rest area we didn't have far to drive to Split Rock Lighthouse.

Split Rock Lighthouse

It looks pretty remote, doesn't it?  And it used to be, back when it was built in 1910.  It was accessible only by water, and people and supplies got up to it by hoists, which I frankly wouldn't dream of trying.  But of course times changed, thanks to the automobile.  This sign explains the lighthouse.

And this marker explains the geology of this area.

As you can see from the road map, the drive took me along Lake Superior all the way to Duluth, pop. 86,697.

I tried to follow Google's directions to a grocery store, but right from the beginning I had to adjust the route because Google didn't mention I'd have to go under a bridge with only a 10' clearance.  The original route included wandering around in a residential area for quite a bit, so when I shifted routes, I just drove until I found a familiar street and then tried to figure out which way to go to get to something Google mentioned.  It was clear this was an older, very well-established and likely affluent area of town where my RV didn't really belong, but we made it okay.

Went to the grocery store and the nearby liquor store (surprisingly open on Sunday afternoons), and then wandered through Duluth a bit before finding I-35 (which also runs through central Texas) to head to tonight's campground.

The day had been overcast and intermittently rainy all along, but the sun finally came out about 4:00, which was a nice change.  The rain had left puddles all over the campground and made emptying my waste tanks a chore, but the campground itself was fairly flat so, for a change, I found a mostly level spot at my campsite.