We had a rather slow foggy drive from our overnight stop in Wall, South Dakota into the Twin Cities in Minnesota, but things improved on our way north into Duluth. We arrived at Shevaun and Matt's house to find it well-decorated in anticipation of Halloween and we got to meet their lovely new dog called Fitzy. It took me a while to get used to this because Fitzy is a young female but the name is short for Edmund Fitzgerald which is a man's name. They chose the name because of a link to Lake Superior, on the shores of which Duluth is located. It was on this lake, in 1975, that the large ore-ship Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a terrible storm with the loss of all 29 people on board. This tragedy was memorialized in the top-ten song by Gordon Lightfoot "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" that was released the following year. (Rather more prosaically, the ship was named for the President of the company that owned it.)



Shevaun and Fitzy

On a rather misty Saturday morning, Shev, Randall, Fitzy, and I went for a lovely walk in the woods north of Duluth. We admired the autumnal colors and the sight of Matt pounding into a refreshment stop along the path of a 27-mile-run (43 km) that was organized not as part of a race but as an opportunity for like-minded ultra-marathoners to do it just for fun and practice. Crazy, crazy!



Matt approaches the refreshment station on his 27 mile "fun-run"

The following day, we enjoyed a more sedate walk along the waterfront of Duluth including a look at the Aerial Lift Bridge over the Duluth Ship Canal. When this bridge was completed in 1905, it was a rare example of a transporter bridge in which vehicles and passengers were loaded onto a platform or gondola (basically a piece of the road). This was suspended on wires or a metal frame below a high top-span and using wheels or rollers on the top-span, the gondola was pulled across the canal from one side to the other. Thus, ships could pass under the top-span when the gondola was on one side of the canal.

The Duluth Transporter Bridge gondola had a capacity of 60 short tons (54 tonnes) so could carry 350 people plus wagons, streetcars or automobiles. A trip across the canal took about one minute, and the gondola moved across once every five minutes during busy times of the day. About two dozen transporter bridges were built in the US and only 12 are still in service.



Matt and Shev with the Aerial Lift Bridge rising behind them

With growing tourism and local population, by the mid-1920s the increase in traffic because too much for the gondola system. So in 1929, an aerial bridge replaced the transporter bridge, with the towers and top-span raised, and below which a section of road the full length of the bridge could be raised and lowered. Thus, instead of the canal always being open for ships unless the gondola of vehicles was crossing, the road became always open for vehicles unless it had to be raised for a ship to pass, more like a traditional swing- or drawbridge.

The bridge has a span of 390 feet (119 m) and can be raised to its full height of 135 feet (41 m) in about a minute. The bridge is raised approximately five thousand times per year with a customary horn-blowing sequence copied between the ship and bridge each time a ship passes through. Long-short-long-short means to raise the bridge, and Long-short-short is a friendly salute. As if on cue, during our brief visit to the Ship Canal, we were treated to the sight of the bridge being partially raised to allow a sport-fishing boat through.



Waterfalls along the Duluth Trail where Matt had been running