Travel Journal
We were getting very tired of eating off of paper plates so made a decision to find a local potter and buy 2 “special” plates for our journey. We found Saddle Rock Pottery run by Bruce and Cynthia Lovold. They invited us to their gallery which was even more in the middle of nowhere than we already were. Nice folks and some really nice work.
They were very interested in our trip and told us all about how they built their “dream barn” to satisfy their needs to be artists.
Why is it that each geographical area seems to have its own special food dish? In the Southern Tier of NY it is “Spiedies”. These are chunks of chicken, pork or venison marinated in a special sauce and grilled.
When we hiked into Two Harbors, Minnesota each gift shop and service station seemed to advertise “Wile Rice”. We picked Buddy’s Mercantile as the place we would inquire/purchase some of this delicacy. Buddy’s daughter gave us a lesson on what wild rice is and how to cook it. It is actually lake grass seeds that are harvested by hand by grabbing bunches of it and shaking the seeds into the boat. It is then blanched (some claim to blanch by hand…..), dried and packaged. The different versions of the seed, depending on how processed they are, will take from 30-70 minutes to cook in boiling water.
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan had a dish called a Pasty. years ago we kept ordering them by using a “hard A” like in children’s paste. We were finally corrected and now use a “soft A” like ‘pass-tee” to order them (I love it when someone speaks up and corrects what are, in local areas, horrible errors in dialect).
These are a baked sandwich containing chunks of meat, potato, carrot and whatever other vegetable the chef wants. They originated from the mining days when a miner could carry one into the mines and have a well balanced meal all in one pocket sandwich.
We also learned of and tried a special meat called Cudighi Sausage. This was somewhat local to Ishpeming, Michigan. It was very tasty and did not contain as much fat residue after cooking.
As native New Yorkers we still favor the spiedies but the pasties, sausage and wild rice are now on the menu every day or two while we are in the area.
Pie seems to be big on the North Shore also. Self proclaimed “world famous” Betty’s Pies is 4 miles north of Two Harbors. We passed by it day in and day out going to and coming from our hikes and noticed the huge parking lot was always packed. We finally decided to fight the crowds and see how good it was. Laurie tried the Butterfinger pie and I tried the Great Lakes Fruit pie with the crumble topping. They were special and BIG. There are other pie shacks along Route 61 but we don’t have the caloric capacity to try them all….even with all the hiking!
Back home in NY we are witnessing two industries growing very quickly. They are craft breweries and craft distilleries. A far cry from the times of prohibition we would say. The Minnesota culture seems to promote growth in both of these industries, especially the breweries. We are currently just north of Two Harbors and enjoying the fruits of Castle Danger Brewery’s labor.
Back in Duluth we found many breweries right near our campsite in Canal Park. Our favorite is Bent Paddle Brewery. The Canal Park Brewery comes in a close second.
We stopped into the Vikre Distillery and sampled some of their whiskey and vodka. It was actually very smooth and had subtle hints of this and that.
We actually had a chance to stop at a neat little restaurant on the Lakewalk in Duluth right in the middle of our daily 8 mile hike. The SHT route takes you right downtown so a hungry and thirsty hiker can fill up. Fish and chips and a flight of local beer. Just enough energy to get us back up the hills to the ridge overlooking the lake with “Superior” views.
After all our days of hiking on the Superior Hiking Trail we opted for something different today. We decided to rent kayaks and head out to mingle with the “big guys”. The freighter schedule called for one Laker (1000 foot ship that is so big it cannot leave the Great Lakes) leaving port at 8pm and a Salty (700 foot ship that can fit through the locks heading to the Saint Lawrence Seaway headed to the Atlantic) arriving after that.
We went to the beach at Burlington Bay at around 7pm. This beach can be used for swimming but only the strong (read…crazy) will go swimming in this chilly water. The water high temperature on the Northern Shore in August is 66 degrees F. Instead of swimming we met Christy, an “entrepreneur” who rents kayaks out of the back of her minivan. She took us up to Agate Bay about 2 miles away and launched us into the lake right between a lighthouse and the Laker.
The Laker belched out its steam and set off all sorts of alarms seeming to say “I am ready to depart” but it actually never left port.
We stayed out paddling around until shortly after nine before coming in to watch two families of ducks “rumble” over which family had the rights to the kids bread crumbs.
Now that we are hooked on the serene sense one gets on a calm night paddling in Lake Superior we will look into purchasing two kayaks to bring with us westward. It is not the money that will prevent us from buying but the logistics of carrying them throughout our journies. If we can find some way to load them onto our rig without getting in the way of our tandem bicycle and/or our motor scooter and ramps we will do it.
AND…the verdict is…….No kayak purchase on this trip. They are definitely in our near future though.
We always wondered what taking off and landing on the water would be like. Turns out it is much smoother than landing on a runway. This is when the lake is calm the pilot told us otherwise, all bets are off. We got hooked into this by taking a nice evening bike ride down the point on Minnesota Avenue. The “end of the road” was an airstrip that had an sign for seaplane rides. We were fairly easily talked into joining a family of 4 for the 7:00pm flight. The pilot told us that the more folks on board, the longer he can afford to fly. The conditions were also very calm and the skies were clear.
We took off and immediately the pilot gave us an interesting history lesson of the area that helped us see the sites at ground level in an entirely new way. After a very smooth ride we landed 45 minutes later without incident.
It truly was a thrill to fly this way. The pilot asked us if we wanted to stick around and watch them take the plane out of the water and “wheel” it into the hanger using his mid-sized John Deere lawn tractor.
He also noted that a plane from Canada was landing and that the border patrol had been called to clear the plane and it’s passengers for entry into our great country. Why would anyone fly illegal things into the country and call border patrol on themselves?
We were treated to some awesome views of the Lake Superior Shoreline and the City of Duluth, Minnesota.
The gift shop had a wonderful selection of flying memorabilia.
For old folks like us you probably remember the “potential craze” back near the turn of the century called simply “IT”. The ad gimmicks would basically just say “It is coming” and they never told you what it was. IT turns out to be called a Segway and is a total blast to ride. It took us about 10 minutes to learn how to balance on it and ride it without killing ourselves. About 5 of those minutes used to coerce us to actually get on IT.
One stop on the tour was the Rose Garden at the far reaches of Canal Park in the City of Duluth. When Interstate 35 was constructed through downtown in 1992 the fine folks on the planning board managed to get three separate tunnels created. On each tunnel they put 6 feet of dirt and created city parks One of them was the Rose Garden
Canal Park was designated as an area for tourism to help Duluth recover from the loss of the city’s industrial base in the 1980s. We explored the 4.2 mile lakewalk/boardwald a number of times walking and bike riding as well as a bit on the Segway. This is one of the nicest city revitalization projects we have seen.
And so ends our Segway tour of Duluth!
July 7–>13
We have been in the Grand Marais area before when we took our tandem bike around Lake Superior in 2006. It was back then that we realized how beautiful the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is. For that reason we chose to motor up through lower Michigan to cross the Mackinaw Bridge and spend some time in the UP versus driving through Indiana and Illinois to reach Duluth, MN. What a great choice it was.
Some local residents claimed we must hike the Chapel Loop hike near Munising, Michigan. We concur that so far, this is the nicest 10 mile hike we have ever been on. After a nice 3 mile hike into the lakeshore with a few nice waterfalls we were treated to 4 miles of the North Country National Scenic Trail and its views of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. That is an aweful lot of National stuff for one day but boy are we glad the government decided to keep this piece of property in the public domain.
Notice the poor tree clinging to the mainland by the “roots of its chinny chin chin”. How that occurred we will never know (unless someone out there knows these things and will tell us).
The trail tread was very easy to walk but we didn’t have any interest in slipping a bit to the left as the lake was 100-200 feet below. As much as we like swimming, the fall might not allow a swim in the very cold waters of Gitche Gumme.
This little guy (maybe gal?) was not afraid of human activity. I am sure many have fed him before but I get a bit guarded about the amount of food we have to eat when out for a long hike.
We read a bit about the Michigan H58. It has an interesting, and somewhat recent history. Google it for more interesting info on it. It sounded interesting enough for us to take a bike ride from Munising to Grand Marais one day. We are either becoming wussier or wiser as we drove the bike to just outside Munising and bicycled back to Grand Marais before taking our scooter back the 40 miles to pick up the truck. In the “olden days” we would have cycled both ways. We stopped at a little pull out to eat our lunch and found this sign right on the lakeshore that read “No ATV activity beyond this point”. We thought the lake was a good enough indication regarding that.
We would have loved to stay in the UP of Michigan but there is more to see in our great country. Off to Minnesota and the Superior Hiking Trail.
July 3–>July6
It is Brad’s birthday. He stopped up to bid us a fond adieux before we left at around 1:30 for our long journey. As it was 95 degrees as we were having the truck pull our loaded rig up all the hills of New England we were very happy to have leased the Chevy truck for the trip. Boy are we going to beat the crap out of it over the next few years.
We got to the campground at a bit after 9pm so the sun was about gone but the area seemed deserted. We realized that this was our 20 year anniversary of sorts as it was 1998 when we met and the first place I took Laurie was to the Bretton Woods area in NH.
What a great sleep in the crisp and cool NH air. The temperature dropped from 95 into the mid 50s by morning time. We almost had to put the heat on! After breakfast we unloaded the scooter for a ride up to the WMNF (White Mountain National Forest) parking area and a nice hike up to the Gem Pool for our yearly picture. On the way up we came across a moose.
That little pine tree is now around 12 feet tall and some of its lower branches have been mutilated by folks resting on the rock next to it over the years but our photo looks very similar to the one we took there almost exactly 20 years ago.
2003
Today (2018)…..Have we aged?
We noted that we had not done any hiking with elevation this year and that the boulders/tree roots etc were doing their job in keeping our core muscles in shape and our balance in check. We were going to scooter up Clinton Rd. to the Mt. Willard hiking trail but the road was closed. That is not the first time a seasonal road up here was closed in the middle of the summer. Poor folks with a GPS.
We drove down to Upper Falls and watched the locals cliff dive etc. It was by far, the busiest I have ever seen the falls. No diving for us today though. A very weird site was a totally tattooed guy with a big swastika on his chest. He was swimming etc next to all sorts of folks. Wonder what they all thought of his careless advertising?
Next stop … Mt. Willard. We were going to scooter up Clinton Road to the Mt. Willard hiking trail but the road was closed. That is not the first time a seasonal road up here was closed in the middle of the summer. Poor folks with a GPS. There was almost no one at the summit and the views were incredible as usual. The bugs put a small damper on the mood but we are up north toward the end of black fly season so that is how it goes.
After dinner we drove down to Lower falls for a game of cards and a bottle of champagne. Unfortunately the champagne bottle slipped and smashed on the rocks. We will call the rocks our “ship” that we are christening for lack of anything else to say about that. Another wonderful evening was had by all.
Thursday saw us getting on the bike for the first time in a while. We decided to cycle to lunch in Bethlehem, NH (not the middle east). We doubt the name of the town has anything to do with it but summertime seems to be the time when the Orthodox Jewish community likes to vacation here. We picked a good route for the first ride as there was only one real hill each way. We decided to try the Maplewood golf course/country club for our lunch. We have been driving through Bethlehem yearly and always wondered what the very expensive looking establishments were like.
We did get to Lower Falls for some card playing and relaxing. Hard to believe that last time we were there we noted that the next time we see the falls we will be unemployed. It is the 40th anniversary of the first time I visited NH. Lots of memories with many more to come.
It still doesn’t seem like we are on the road but it was great to be back to our spiritual home in the White Mountains of NH.