The Sting

The Aerial Lift Bridge is a major landmark in the port city of Duluth, Minnesota. The span is a vertical lift bridge, which is rather uncommon, but it began life as an extremely rare transporter bridge—the first of just two such bridges ever constructed in the U.S. Originally built in 1905, the entire bridge rises like an elevator rather than swinging up as most do. We were wandering along the Lakewalk on Lake Superior when a very large ship, Mesabi Miner, came through so we were able to watch the process. It was actually pretty quick and we were really up close and personal with the ship as it went through. We wandered the length of the Lakewalk to the Rose Gardens in Leif Erickson Park. The Leif Erickson Park Rose Garden includes over 3000 rose bushes representing more than 100 varieties among its flowering landscape plantings. Besides being one of the Midwest's few formal English style Rose Gardens, the park is architecturally significant for being constructed over Duluth's I-35 expressway. Walking around the park it is amazing to realize that below your feet trucks and cars are streaming along! We decided to have lunch at the harbor entrance at a small boat that had been made into a lunch counter. We sat down to eat at a nearby picnic table and suddenly visitors appeared. The first were sea gulls; the second were bees. The sea gulls were patiently waiting for us to feed them. The bees were not waiting. They swarmed the food. We decided to leave and, while the bees were on one piece of food, we grabbed the other. We almost got away. One very unhappy bee stung Sandi on the hand. Her hand swelled immediately and was very sore. This ended our time at the harbor.

Sep 8, 2010

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