Hibbing

Travel Day 1 - Iron River, WI

I had a long enough drive between my last stop in Michigan and my next destination that I wanted to break up the drive over two days. Probably not necessary, but I do find driving with the trailer more fatiguing than just driving my truck by itself, even if it is not as bad as I originally feared. So you may be asking why Iron River? Well, it was about halfway between Houghton, Michigan, and my next stop in Gilbert, Minnesota and had a decently reviewed campground. So I made the little over three hour, 170 mile drive to Iron River. Not that it mattered much since it was just for one night, but I did get lucky and get a camp site right on Iron Lake:

This place was less campground and more mobile home park, I think they only had maybe a half dozen sites that were the typical campground style, and the rest were semi-permanent structures with wood stairs, decks, and some even had gardens. A fancy trailer: A typical deck:

Travel Day 2 - Gilbert, MN

Tuesday I got up and made the 2.5 hour, 103 mile drive to Gilbert, Minnesota. It was mostly a nice, easy drive except Duluth had dense fog that made travel over about 20 MPH difficult for several miles. The campground I’m staying at seems really nice, it has the largest camp sites by far, and I have a nice overlook of Lake Ore-be-gone:

So you may be asking why Gilbert? Well because it is relatively close to Hibbing, Minnesota where my friend Matt (and family) lives:

Hibbing, MN

In addition to being where Matt currently lives, Hibbing is also the birth place of Bob Dylan and Greyhound bus lines. Greyhound was originally founded as a way to transport mine workers and expanded from there. Hibbing is home to the Hull-Rust-Mahoning iron ore mine, which is the largest open pit iron mine in the world at five miles long, two miles wide, and over 500 feet deep.

Hibbing maintains an overlook of the pit that also has some old equipment on display, including the massive trucks they use to move dirt around: Not too much movable stuff that will make me feel (and look) small, but a 10.5 foot diameter tire will do it. This truck weighed about 170 tons, was capable of hauling another 150 tons, and is estimated to have hauled over 30 million tons in its 110,000 hour lifetime.

Flogging Molly

For Matt’s birthday this year, his wife got us tickets to see his favorite band, Flogging Molly, since they were in Minneapolis while I was going to be in town. Not really my cup of tea (but they do have a few songs that are growing on me), but it is fun to see the enjoyment Matt gets from seeing them. Minneapolis is about three hours away, so Wednesday we got on the road in the morning and were at Brit’s Pub by early afternoon to start the pre-game festivities with a few pints of Guinness. We later moved to Finnegan’s, a local brewery to get closer to the venue. The venue itself, a place called The Armory, was awesome. About the size of a large high school or small college basketball arena, it was large enough to comfortably accommodate the crowd. It had bars that ran down both long sides the entire way with adequate staffing so you never had to wait for a drink, and there were enough bathrooms so there was never a line. It was a great concert experience:

The next day was a pretty lazy day with a slow start, but the highlight was seeing Matt’s oldest son, my godson, play soccer. Watching a bunch of five year olds (and younger) play any sport is always amusing to me (in small doses).