Duluth, Minnesota, United States
Full day in Duluth today. Our plan was to go visit the aquarium and the railroad museum, both of which are within a mile of the hotel, so we left the car where it was and walked. The two venues both opened at 10, so before we went to the museum, I walked around to collect up a few geocaches. The most interesting of those is a cache which required me to solve a puzzle about curling to get the final coordinates. The devoted followers of this blog (all three of them) will recall that I went to Brandon, Manitoba, in March of 2019 to attend the Tim Horton's Brier--the Canadian Men's Curling Championsip. (Blog here.) I'm a fan. Not a fanatic, but I do like curling, so I had to be sure to get this cache, if none other. AND for a bonus, the cache is hidden just outside the Duluth Curling Club--home of the 2018 Olympic Gold Medal winning curling team. Didn't see the team and didn't see any curling, but I was on the spot where they train. Cool.
I put in about 3 miles walking before we got to the main events of the day.
I met Tim at the aquarium shortly after 10 and we spent about an hour and a half touring around. A lot of it is under construction (no discount, however!), but they have some nice displays. Big section upstairs of fish and other animals indigenous to Minnesota. Downstairs has the more exotic displays. Lots of photos with some notes.
Lunch turns out to be a bit of a problem. Apparently, in downtown Duluth, on a weekday, most of the restaurants don't open until 3:00 or 4:00.
One opened at 1:00--just after the lunch hour. Very odd. We took one wrong turn when we picked a place Google claimed was open but was not. I called the next one before we walked over there.
The railroad museum is in the old train station. They still run excursion trains out of there, but no other rail traffic, so far as I could tell. They've got a fairly impressive collection of engines and other train cars, and they've been beautifully restored by volunteers. One can only imagine the thousands of hours of work that has gone into that. We spent a couple of hours there, and got back to the hotel around 4:00. I walked more than 16,000 steps and more than 6 miles. More usual for this trip has been around 14,000.
Tomorrow we're going to take a walk with one of the owners of the hotel. He hosts a little stroll down the pier and talks about Duluth. The sign advertising this junket says "some of it is true!" Should be interesting. Then we head south to Woodbury, MN to another drive-in. En route, we'll drive through Wisconsin and visit the St. Croix National Scenic River. One more passport stamp for good measure!
2025-05-23