Sault Ste. Marie

Once I figured out how to spell the name of this city I then became curious as to how it got its name.  The oldest town in the state, Sault Ste. Marie, was established in 1668 by fathers Jacques Marquette and Claude Dablon in 1668. They named the town in honor of the Virgin Mary. The French word "sault" means rapids or waterfalls. The town lies along the St.Marys River whose rapids proved to be a natural barrier to vessel navigation. The river is the only water connection between Lake Superior and the other Great Lakes.  It falls 21-feet from the level of Lake Superior to the level of the lower lakes. The early settlers soon found it a difficult process to portage around the falls. The first locks for the river, on the U.S. side of the river, were built in 1853.  This became known as the St.Marys Falls Ship Canal, or the Soo.  We were fortunate that on the day we were in Sault Ste.Marie the buildings and grounds of the locks were opened to the public, a day designated as "Engineer's Day".   The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were available to answer any questions regarding the locks.  We also were able to walk close to a couple of the locks, unfortunately no large ships were coming through at the time we were there.  I will speak more regarding the ship canal in my next posting.  We took a boat tour of the town's harbor in the afternoon.

 From the locks we walked down Water Street to tour the historic part of the town.  Irish fur trader John Johnston and his Ojibwe wife, Oshahguscodaywayquay, established their home and business in Sault Ste. Marie in 1793.  Unfortunately Johnson was sympathetic to the British and assisted them in taking  Fort Mackinac in 1812.   In retaliation the Americans torched his home in 1815.  He rebuilt the home and added an addition in 1823.  The addition is the only part of the home which has survived and is the oldest building in Sault Ste. Marie.

Johnston's eldest daughter married Henry Schoolcraft, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures as well as for his 1832 expedition for the origin of the Mississippi River.  His wife shared with him her knowledge of Ojibwe legends ( probably obtained from her mom) and Schoolcraft passed them on to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Those stories were in part a source for Longfellow's epic poem  The Song of Hiawatha.  Schoolcraft's house, which later became an Indian Agency Office, is also still on Water Street. It was built in 1826.  After the Indian agency moved out the federal style building, with two symmetrical wings on it, became the home of Charles Harvey who built the first locks at the Sault. 

Tahquamenon Falls State Park

This is quite a beautiful park with a lower and upper falls.  The lower falls can be seen in the background of the above picture. We had a wonderful day in this park yesterday.  And I could not help but think of our family and friends currently sweltering in the lower states.  We had a rather pleasant light cool breeze on us all day.  Many rivers flow north into Lake Superior, including the Tahquamenon River.  They are on an escarpment  forming some of Michigan's most spectacular waterfalls, the upper falls at Tahquamenon being the second largest of all the falls east of the Mississippi.  The Tahquamenon River rises from springs and drains a watershed of more than 790 square miles, which explains the source of water for the falls which has a height of 50 feet and is 200 feet across.  The amber color of the water is not rust or mud but is caused by the cedar, spruce and hemlock trees in the swamps drained by the river. The turbulent falls stirs up all that vegetation and produces a lot of foam, which we saw not only in the water but also floating in the air above the falls.

The many bird songs and their calls to each other caught our attention as we were hiking around the falls. We were able to catch a glimpse of the Blackburnian Warbler- a bird, which, as we learned from an interpretive sign on the trail,  likes to hang around the upper falls, where we saw him.  He migrates during the winter to  Central and South America.  Another bird, pointed out to us by a man on the nature trail, was the Bohemian waxwing- we were certain it was not the cedar waxwing because he likes open habitats, not the woodlands where the Bohemian waxwing hangs out- he especially likes the black spruce.  Speaking of woodlands, there has been a great deal of logging in this area for 40 years, it has been estimated that about one billion white and red pine were removed.  However, in Tahquamenon Park there are still old- growth forests of sugar maple, American beech, yellow birch, and eastern hemlock. From the park we drove to Whitefish Point Lighthouse.

  At the light station there is a museum concerning ships lost to the treacherous waves of Lake Superior, with an emphasis on the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald.  However, I choose to spend more of my time on the beach than in the museum.  Many beautiful smooth stones can be found on the beach, including agates.

Baraga County Attractions, Upper Peninsula

We certainly had a full day today, seeing about 6 waterfalls, a shrine, museum and a cemetery. We did not have to drive all that far because the attractions are mostly concentrated around the city of L'Anse.  The shrine honors Bishop Baraga.  He was better known as the "Snowshoe Priest".  In 1843 he founded a mission in L'Anse.  His statue is on 5 arches which represent the 5 missions he served.  It has been said that  over most winters he averaged 700 miles on snowshoes,  serving Native Americans.

 The museum we toured is a lumber mill once used by Henry Ford to make his wooden cars from 1936 until 1951, when the demand for wood in cars ended.  It is located in Alberta, Michigan- a company town once owned by Ford. In the museum I learned that there is a connection between Kingsford Briquettes and Henry Ford.  He made the briquettes for his dealerships, they were given free to customers who bought his cars. He sold the company to E.G. Kingsford in 1924.  In the visitor's center for the museum I also learned about birds eye maple. It is a peculiar phenomena which only occurs in certain sugar maples. The trees have a distinctive swirling eyes pattern in the wood.  Furniture made with this wood is on display at the center.

If you are considering buying one of those rockers, the price tag is $17,000 dollars. I will mention here only two of the six falls which we saw today. Canyon Falls is located in a beautiful box canyon which has several levels of falls.  It is the most popular of all the falls in this area for tourists. It is better known as the "Grand Canyon of Michigan".  In the picture my emphasis is more on the canyon rather than the falls.

The other impressive falls which we hiked into today is Silver Falls. There are two levels of falls here;  from the upper falls we took a foot trail about 100 feet down to the lower falls, pictured below.

The Piney Indian Cemetery was another one of our interesting stops of the day. Graves of the Chippewa Nation here date back to the 1840s.  In this cemetery are many spirit houses.  According to Native American belief, when a person dies he needs supplies as food and other items for his 4 day journey to the spirit world. It is a practice continued today- we found a grave of a man buried in 2010 which had a spirit house. A sign explaining the cemetery makes the comment that "our ancestors rest well in this sacred ground".

Keweenwa Peninsula

We have traveled to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and our home is now parked at essentially what amounts to a casino and hotel parking lot. It is a small area set up to accommodate recreational vehicles, however. Yesterday, Saturday, we drove north to Houghton and took the lift bridge over to the Keweenwa Peninsula.  At the turn of the twentieth century many of the towns on this peninsula were copper mining towns. We toured the Quincy Mine and Hoist, which is now a national historic landmark. There is still a good deal of copper yet in the mine, but for what it is worth in today’s market, it would not be profitable to put the mine back into operation again. The Quincy Mine was a working mine for about 100 years, from the 1840s to 1945.  We considered returning home after having lunch in Calumet, but we had heard of a scenic drive north of the town.   Apparently it is a stretch of road where old growth forests tower over the highway and stand within touching distance of each other. A national park ranger informed us that it would be “worth our while”.  It would mean traveling 20 more miles than we had planned, but we decided that we had the time to kill. It did turn out to be a wonderful trip. Before reaching that scenic section of road on SR 41, however, we saw an historic snow marker in a roadside park.  In 1978-79 it snowed 390 inches. The average is usually 240 inches, even that amount I can’t comprehend!

 We eventually came to the scenic area of woodlands. The towering beauty of the aspens, birch, maples and spruce trees was indeed impressive to see. They formed a green tunnel down the road.

 After driving through the town of Copper Harbor we headed south on the peninsula toward home.  We connected with SR 26 so we could travel along Lake Superior’s shoreline. We stopped at the small town of Eagle Harbor to look at the lighthouse. The lighthouse is in the background of the picture below.

At Great Sand Bay we encountered a bit of sand over the road and discovered some fairly large sand dunes along the shoreline.  Driving further, we saw Jacob Falls as well as Eagle River Falls, pictured below.  When we started on this drive we sure did not realize how picturesque it was going to be!

 

 An historical marker near the falls noted that Eagle Falls is alleged to be the first copper mine in the Western Hemisphere. After a supper break we continued toward home. It is great being this far north  in June because we were still in daylight driving back home, which we reached by 10 PM. 

Our last Day in Minnesota

I did not plan to write any more postings from Duluth, but we had an interesting dayyesterday when we traveled to an area south of Duluth. We knew before heading out that parts of Interstate 35 were out either because of construction or flooding. However, we thought we still could get to the town of Moose Lake using county roads. Moose Lake is the town were we had planned to visit a friend of ours. We told her we would arrive at 11 AM, but did not make it there until about 1:30 PM.  We encountered many road closures because of flooded rivers and lakes. We did make it to within two miles of our friend's house when high water on the road prevented us from going any further. We had to turn around and find an alternative route, a route which took us about 20 miles out of our way and still required us to drive through a flowing current of water. We were determined to make it, that was for sure. Fortunately the first road closure was navigable for our return trip home. We still had to drive through a bit of water, however. The section of road pictured below is between two lakes and just outside of the town of Barnum.

We stopped in Barnum to view the Moose  River which was over its banks, as you can also see in the picture below. We were informed by a town resident that earlier in the day the river was 2.5 feet higher.  Many of the town's residents have flooded basements. While we were there people were moving around on  some of the streets in canoes.

On our way back into Duluth we took the Skyline Parkway which is a scenic by-way above the city.  Enger Tower is on the parkway and we wanted to see that before leaving town tomorrow.   From the tower we had a good view of Lake Superior, the harbors, docks and city. It is different perspective of the city than the one I posted a couple days ago, in this picture we are looking down at the city from the tower.  In case you are wondering, the water in the lake in the foreground is a brownish color because of the recent storms.  Surrounding Enger Tower is a beautiful park where I was surprised to find a fragrant blooming camelilla bush. Other flowers in bloom included azaleas and iris- guess it is still spring in this area.

Tour of Downtown Duluth

As I indicated in the last posting, the flooding of Duluth prevented us from visiting some of its top tourist attractions.  And I do realize that that inconvenience for us is a minor issue compared to the destruction which the town has experience in the past twenty-four hours. The Depot was one place we had hoped to visit.  It is a renovated 1892 railroad station with four museums containing living exhibits and art galleries. We stopped there to see if it was opened and outside its dooors found an interesting statue, which is pictured below. It is of Albert Woolson, the oldest Union survivor of the Civil War. He was born in 1847 and died in 1956.  We soon came to find that not much was opened today, including the Depot. 

Driving around Duluth we noticed certain areas of the town have been designated as the "Bob Dylan Way".  It is a 1.8 mile of road in honor of the singer who spent the first 5 years of his life in Duluth.  And it was at the Duluth Armory that the 17 year-old Bob Dylan heard Buddy Holly two nights before Holly's death.  Dylan has said that his experience that night led him to choose a career in music. There is a small exhibit in the Fitger's building dedicated to Bob Dylan.

The Fitger's Brewery had a much bigger beer-making operation about 100 years ago.  It is a very large imposing brick building which dominates the downtown area of Duluth.  Besides the brewery, it also has a bar and grill, as well as an inn and retail shops. As we approached the building our attention was caught by the large number of pigeons feeding on the left over grain set out by the brewery.  That was pretty much our afternoon in Duluth,  however we did find a few shops open.  We are leaving Friday from here after visiting a friend tomorrow, guess we just need to return to Duluth another time.

Flooding of Duluth, 2012

We are now parked in Duluth, pictured above with the Depot in the foreground. We were here last August, but decided to visit here again as it seemed a good stop on our path to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  We had a big day planned today, seeing some places in town which we had not visited last year when we were here.  However, a big storm came through Duluth last night and dumped 8 inches of rain.  The storm sure made sleeping difficult, what with the wind rocking our home and the rain pouring in torrents on our roof.  The picture below gives you an idea what we saw this morning when we looked out our windows.

We turned on the television and received the news that some streets in Duluth have collapsed because of the heavy flow of water. All public buildings were closed for the day.  Now I have a greater appreciation for the warnings of flash floods.  It would have been dangerous for anyone to have been out on the streets of Duluth last night.  As you may notice in the first picture of this posting, Duluth is a hilly town. Torrents of water flowed down the hillsides last night, tore up sidewalks and created large holes in the streets.

 Once the water went down a bit, and it stopped raining, we stepped outside where we met up with the owner of the park where we reside. He had a pump going on the marina and a hose connected to it which was dumping the rainwater into Lake Superior.  He informed us that as far as he knows that last big rain amounted to 4 inches about 100 years ago. He added that in the past weeks Duluth has received rain of 2-3 inches several times and the ground is very saturated.  We drove into town hoping to find the Great Lakes Aquarium opened, or the Depot- but both were closed. We also had plans to see the zoo, but we were informed that the zoo was devastated by the flood and some animals killed. We parked near Fitger's Inn/Brewery and, after touring that building, we started to walk around downtown Duluth.  Until that time we certainly did not have a good grasp of the damage done to the city.  We could see where the heaviest streams of water had been;  leaving grass flattened, moving gravel, large rocks and mud onto sidewalks and streets. Pressure from underneath broke water mains and lifted up large sections of the roads.

We were told that the driver of the car ( which is pictured above) was in it early this morning when the car took a dive downwards.  Apparently he walked away from it unhurt and said he was leaving it as he had no insurance on the car. From what little John and I could see of the flood damage in Duluth it is understandable that the city is seeking state and federal funding to begin some of the major repairs to its infrastructure.

Bemidiji, Minnesota

Benmidji is the first city on the Mississippi. The name of the city is an Ojibwe term meaning "waters crossing waters".  It is here where the Mississippi crosses Lake Bemidji and flows north before flowing south and east. At the north end of the lake is Bog Lake, where we took a very interesting walk along a boardwalk. Bogs have been described as "Minnesota's last wilderness".  Here we saw lady's slipper orchids as well as blue flag flowers(they are in the iris family).  The latter can be seen in the center of the picture below.

We also saw many pitcher-plants in the bog. They are type of insect-eating plant. According to an interpretive sign along the boardwalk spiders and frogs also benefit from the insects which are caught by this plant.

In the town of Bemidji we took the town's art walk of sculptures and murals. They are made by local artists and are on loan to the community for one year. The theme of the artwork is "A Sense of Place and Its People".  A beaver is pictured below.

We ended our day at the Paul Bunyan Playhouse where we saw the play Spitfire Grill- a wonderful musical with a folk/blue grass flavored score. It has been amazing to us what great talent there is the little towns of northern Minnesota. Saturday night we took in a show at the Woodtick Theater in Akeley. The band put on a wonderful  musical show complete with jokes and comedy acts, it reminded us of the type of shows we have seen in Branson, Missouri.  Most of the band members have been entertaining for at least 20 years. The band also has a new member who is 16 years old.  The performer, Brian Bass, has an excellent singing voice and plays the guitar skillfully as well. The show was certainly worth our time and money.

Paul Bunyan in Northern Minnesota

We have run into so much information regarding this legendary man that I figured it was about time I devote one of my posts to him. Some of Bunyan's legends I found in a brochure printed by Bemidji Chamber of Commerce. The legendary superman and woods man was born in Bemidiji.  It took 5 large storks, working overtime to deliver Paul to his parents. Northern Minnesota was the center of his many exploits and was Paul's Playground. At the Visitor's Center in Bemidiji is this statute of him. Inside the center are many memorabilia belonging to Paul. Such Bunyan- sized objects are his axe, boxer shorts, watch and gun.

Paul raised Babe from infancy, and it is said that Babe stamped around so much that his hoof prints filled with rainwater and created Minnesota's 10,000 lakes. In the town of Backus we learned about Colonel Cobber, a man who apparently introduced Babe and Paul to corn. Paul liked corn so much that in one day he could eat 100 of them. Working with the Colonel, Paul and Babe began planting corn. Babe was very helpful fertilizing the soil. The Colonel also employed E.W. Backus to help clear the land to plant the corn. The townspeople liked E.W. Backus so much that they changed the town's name from Cobber to Backus.

I hope you are paying attention to the irony of the names, because I have another interesting name to share with you. Paul Bunyan married Lucette Diana Kensack. We found her name in the town of Hackensack. I am not sure which came first, the legend of Lucette or the town's name. The statue of her was an Eagle Scout project, so maybe Lucette's last name was taken from the town's name- or maybe there is no connection at all.  By the way, this town claims to be the birthplace of Paul Junior.

Itasca State Park

This is a continuation of my previous posting. After a day of hiking around the state park we stopped for supper at the Douglas Lodge. It was built in 1905. The state park is the second oldest in the nation- the park at Niagara Falls is the oldest. At the lodge's restaurant I had a meal of wild rice and vegetables, John's supper was a walleye sandwich- good Minnesota fare!  After our meal we started out on the Old Timer's Cabin Trail around Mary Lake. As an aside here, the park has about 150 lakes.

 Just as we were starting on the trail a lady approached me and asked whether I wanted to see lady slipper flowers, to which I replied that I had my eye out for them all day and had seen none. She directed me as to how I might find them on the trail. What a joy to see those delicate orchids along  the wooded trail!  There were a couple patches of the flowers pictured below  I later also found a small yellow lady's slipper further down the trail. We learned later that it takes at least 50 years for the plant to get started before it blooms.

As it was getting late in the evening, our hike ended at the Old Timer's Cabin.  It is a Civilian Conservation Corp cabin that is only 4 logs high. A sign near the cabin notes that the lumber came from trees which had fallen in wind storms, and that they were typical of what trees use to look like when allowed to grow.

On our way back from the cabin we had some interesting sights of wildlife. A heron flew down on some tree branches above our heads and eyed us warily. At the same time we noticed two loons splashing about in the lake ( prior to that we had been hearing their flight calls over the lake). Near the loons the head of an otter popped up out of the water- we were not sure who was fussing at whom!  It was the perfect ending of our day at Itasca State Park.  Driving out of the park we had a couple sightings of deer by the roadside.

Headwaters of the Mississippi

We are currently parked in Walker, Minnesota. It is in the northwestern corner of the state about 30 miles south of Itasca State Park. Before driving to the park yesterday we stopped in Akeley, "birthplace and home of world's largest Paul Bunyan statue" (quotation is from one of the town's advertising fliers).

Akeley had one of the largest sawmills of the early 1900s.  The population of the town then was between 3,00 and 4,000, hard to imagine because the population now is less than 500.  The Red River Lumber Company closed in 1916 and moved to California. Many of its workers moved west with the mill. It was in the lumber camps where the first stories of Paul Bunyan began. Telling tall tales in the evening led to the creation of the strongest and best lumber man of them all, Paul Bunyan.  According to the Minnesota State Historical Society, the first Paul Bunyan story to appear in print was published in Akeley.

Had it not been for the establishment of Itasca State Park in the early 1900s we would not have seen the towering red and white pines which we saw yesterday.  The park protected any further old growth trees from being cut down. In the picture above is a large white pine, its age is about 300 years. The park is also the headwaters of the Mississippi river. Here it is merely 12 feet wide and we could walk across it.

A log structure was originally used to mark the headwaters, that was later replaced with concrete and steel with rocks set on top. We learned at the visitor's center in the park that a drop of the river's water takes 90 days to flow the 2,552 miles into the Gulf of Mexico.  We did not see much wild life on the various trails we took in the park, but our last trail at sunset made up for that!  More on that adventure in the next posting.

Final notes from Sauk Centre

This morning we had a very novel experience- we walked to church!  First Lutheran is only a few streets over from our campground.  As we entered the church a man was playing "This is My Fathers World" on his cornet.  How appropriate for John and I, considering all we have seen in the past few weeks- further words of the song: " of rock and trees, of skies and seas, his hands the wonders wrought".

 The sermon's theme was on how the Spirit moves through every church, uniting us all as brothers and sisters in Christ. The church members of First Lutheran were friendly and welcoming, I could not help but have a feeling of unity with them during that one hour of worship. It also gave me a longing to be back home in St.Louis. In recent weeks two dear friends of ours from Beautiful Savior have passed and I wish I could be back there among our friends, who have been an important part of our past, to share with them the pain of that loss. Thankfully in our travels there are places like First Lutheran where we can still connect with other Christians and be spiritually refreshed. Also, in small towns we have found that we frequently run into the same people and soon feel like old friends. The lady giving communion this morning we met earlier this week working at a museum and another time serving concessions at the  the local theater.
On a lighter note- no pun intended- but I want to post here a picture of some musical instruments located in the park near our home. Another lady and I created some rather strange music together yesterday as the sun set over the lake. The instruments are a xylophone, drums and chimes.

One last item here, and it is a note about one of our stops on Friday. We traveled to the farmstead in Kensington where the famous runestone was unearthed by Olof Ohman in 1898. There is nothing so special about the spot where it was found, only a memorial stone stands there now. What I found more interesting was Ohman home where Karin and Olof raised their nine children.  As I walked around that home (it is in the process of renovation and not open yet for tours) I could not help but think of the sadness within those walls, which probably went on for many years. The  townspeople thought Ohman had perpetrated a hoax on them by chiseling some strange words on a stone. One son, born four years after the stone was found, committed suicide when he was a young man- and another daughter felt it necessary to leave home to escape the constant ridicule. Fortunately Olof Ohman was vindicated by the time of his death in 1935. As I indicated in a previous posting, researchers and scientists by the 1920s were finding enough evidence to prove that the stone was authentic. Below is a picture of Ohman's farm homestead. We are moving on tomorrow to another Minnesota location.

Glacial Ridge Trail

John found a publication titled On the Trail of a Glacier  which we used a lot for our adventures/misadventures yesterday. The maps in that guide were not to scale and lacked in detail so we traced and retraced our steps several times, driving down many back country gravel roads of Minnesota. When we started kvetching about all the gas and miles we covered going nowhere, we reminded each other that it was an adventure which was not all that bad. We saw several deer on the roadways, a ring-necked pheasant, wild turkey, and numerous chipmunks. We also saw many farms, cows and corn fields. This area lies within the Alexandria Glacial Moraine ( I have alluded to that glacier in a previous posting). Years ago blocks of ice, buried in the debris of the glacier, melted to form hundreds of small lakes, dotting the countryside through which we drove yesterday.  Many of the farms we saw had either lakes or small ponds near them. One of the counties we were in has 300 lakes, they sure make for some picturesque scenery!

 Glacial Lakes State Park was one location on the scenic by-way which was quite difficult to find. We spent a couple of hours looking for that park, even driving through a messy road construction area to get there. After finding the park, John wanted only do a quick drive through it, to which I objected with the logic that we had come too far to just give it a cursory glance. We checked with a park ranger to learn which trails of the park would take us to such glacier landscapes as kames, kettles, and eskers. We took a short hike to the highest point in the park, walking along the ridge of a long esker- a long low winding ridge which once was a pile of coarse gravel deposited by a stream flowing in an ice-walled valley.  Below is a picture of the view we had of the glacial landscape once we arrived top of the highest kame ( a rise or hill of glacial drift).

And we saw trolls yesterday! We stopped at Holly Skogen Park where trolls and gnomes can be found in a shaded forest filled with ferns, flowing streams and springs. Thor greeted us on one of the bridges.

Another frustration of the day was our futile search for Indian Mounds in the area of Lake Minnewaska. While wandering the roads on the north shore of that lake I noticed a wedding ceremony taking place at the lakeside and at the same time John exclaimed:  "would you believe it, there is bison in that pasture!".  They were almost directly across the road from the wedding. It certainly had been a day filled with unusual sights. We saw a lot more in the course of that day, but this posting has been long enough. I have one more picture to show- which is of Indherred Lutheran Church. The spires of that church can be seen for many miles on the prairie skyline. It has been an important landmark in that community since 1872, and it is still an active congregation. While walking around on the church grounds, John espied a mud turtle and tried to snap a picture of it. Hard to believe, but that turtle actually ran from John! It was a first for me- a running turtle.  That was a most fitting ending to our strange but fun day.

Munsinger and Clemens Gardens of St.Cloud

These gardens are a real feast for the eyes!  There are no admissions fees or gates, one may wander through them any time of the day or evening.  The Munsinger Garden is the work of the Works Progress Administration during the 1930's.  It is a relaxing and tranquil cottage-style garden located along the Mississippi River.

What is great about this garden is that there are bench swings along its paths, where John and I sat just to relax and watch the river flow by. Shade-loving plants can be found here under tall pine and oak trees. Up the hill and overlooking the Munsinger Gardens are the sunny Clemens Gardens. They were developed in 1986 through the generosity of  Bill Clemens and his family. They also are a real joy to see, and even smell- there is a rose garden with over 1,000 roses.

The Clemens Gardens are made up of six different small gardens. Below is the White Garden, my favorite.

In each garden  is a unique fountain. I have here a picture of Three Graces Fountain, located in the Trelliage Garden.  The fountain sits under a 100-foot, cast iron arbor dome.