Duluth Day 1

John and I went to Duluth this past week. On Tuesday, we drove to my parent's house, which is about halfway to Duluth, and spent the night there. The next morning, we left Emma with my parents and headed out to Duluth. Neither one of us had been away from Emma for more than a few hours, so it was a little tough, but it was nice to have a little Emma break and have some time for ourselves.

I had been to Duluth about 13 years ago with my family, so I remembered seeing some things, but it was really nice to go back and we did a lot of things that we never got around to doing on our family trip. John had never been to Duluth, and if you have never been to Duluth, I highly recommend going. It is such a beautiful trip.

We arrived in Duluth at around lunchtime, and we checked into the hotel and then ate at Grandma's , which is a bar and grill located along the pier. After lunch, we decided to check out the lift bridge, If you have never been to Duluth, the lift bridge is a bridge that goes up for the big "lakers" to get through, and then comes back down to allow traffic to get across the water.

One of the main attractions in Duluth, is watching the large ships or "lakers" come in and out of port. These ships carry coal, iron ore, and grain to other ports in the Great Lakes. These ships are huge! They are 1000 feet long, 105 feet wide, and 56 feet deep. It is amazing to see these ships move in and out of port.

John and I infront of the Lift Bridge

The Lift Bridge

The Lift Bridge all the way to the top

The schedule of all the ships coming in and out for the day

There is a pretty awesome museum that is located next to the lift bridge that has all sorts of information about the bridge and the ships that come in and out. It also talks about some of the wrecks that have happened on Lake Superior, which is always interesting to read about. We spent a couple hours in there looking at all the information and all the scale models of the different "lakers", we are such nerds.

Lake Superior is the other great attraction to Duluth. Lake Superior is huge and beautiful, and cold. It's average temp is 39 degrees F, which is freezing. I put my feet in the water, and it was cold! It sure is beautiful to look at.

Our view from out Hotel room

Light house

After walking along the boardwalk and taking in the sites, we toured an older "laker" ship that is no longer in service. It was really cool to see the entire ship, and hear some history along the way. 

Believe it or not, this ship is not used anymore because it is not large enough compared to the newer ships

We are on one end of the ship, and you can see the other end, quite a ways apart

After the tour, we did some souvenir shopping, and then went to Fitger's Brewery for supper. I got fish tacos that were AMAZING. It took forever to eat there because it was really busy and the power went out in a good portion of Duluth, so their credit card machine was not working either, which caused problems. So, by the time supper was done and we walked all the way back to the hotel, we were pretty beat. We had done a lot of things in the short time we had been in Duluth.

We called it a day to get rested up for the next day's adventures.  More Duluth adventures to come in the next post!