The Silver Bullet was loaded and we were on the road a few minutes before 6:00 AM this morning (October 26). It was an amazing four weeks in Munising but it was time to move on. Our target destination for this portion of the road trip is Salt Lake City, Utah. If all goes as planned we'll be there next Tuesday (November 2). We'll leave the Bullet for a few weeks while we return to Florida to enjoy some time with NaNa as well as to celebrate a milestone birthday.
Google Maps recommended two different routes from Munising to Salt Lake City. We chose neither of them, We're traveling a more northern route that will take us to Billings, Montana. Then we turn towards Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Our last stop will be Park City, Utah before making our way to Salt Lake City. One of the real beauties of this route was that today we were on an interstate for less than five minutes! Everything else was along lightly traveled, very scenic two and four lane roads.
You know you're on a northern route when you drive through Minnesota two hours north of Minneapolis. That's exactly where we found ourselves having lunch today, at the Duluth Grill in Duluth Minnesota. We didn't spend too much time in Duluth, but it was a nice place for a yummy lunch and to quickly see a couple of it's most popular sites. We took a quick peek at the Aerial Lift Bridge that spans the Duluth Ship Canal. The unique feature of the bridge is that the main span is lifted straight up 135 feet to allow ships to pass underneath. We also enjoyed walking the grounds of the Glensheen Mansion, a 39 room mansion on Lake Superior that was built in 1908 by the Congdon family. As we made our way out of town we passed through some really nice neighborhoods of large older homes near the University of Minnesota-Duluth. Speaking of Lake Superior, Duluth is the western end of this massive body of water. A few weeks ago we were in Sault Ste. Marie near the eastern end of the lake. The distance by car between Sault Ste. Marie and Duluth, 417 miles! That's a heck of a lake!
Minnesota is often referred to as the "Land of A Thousand Lakes". While we didn't quite see all of them as we drove from Duluth to the really nice, small town of Detroit Lakes, we saw our fair share. In addition to all the lakes, we passed over a very small but interesting river. It wasn't more than 20-30 feet wide and didn't look very deep. We were passing very close to Lake Itasca. The small river running out of this lake gets mightier as it makes the 2,348 mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico. That small, insignificant river was of course the Mississippi River!
When we arrived we had an hour or two of daylight left, but after being in the car all day we didn't want to drive around to check the town out. The 40 degree temperature and high winds ruled out a nice walk around the area. We hope to see a bit of it in the morning as we head out.
It's getting close to bed time, tomorrow it's on to Billings, Montana by way of Fargo and Bismarck, North Dakota!
