Duluth

Duluth

On Friday, Matt and I made the hour or so drive down to Duluth. A lot of the iron ore from the Iron Range is taken by railroad down to Duluth and then loaded on to freighters to be shipped across the Great Lakes to other cities that take the iron ore and convert it to steel. The idea was to check out some ships coming and going, but it turned out that it was the weekend of Grandma’s Marathon, which is a pretty big deal for the area as there are more than 20,000 participants. Unfortunately for us this meant road and parking lot closures, so we had to park at Grandma’s restaurant, namesake for the race since they were the only business to sponsor the original race in 1977, go in and have a drink (bummer) and then race around to see everything in the Canal Park area before my truck got towed. One of the very cool things in Duluth is the Aerial Lift Bridge. There was a similar one in Houghton, but the whole time I was there I never saw it lifted. We got lucky enough in Duluth to arrive just in time to see the lift bridge coming down:

We walked around downtown checking out some of the local shops and then tried to leave, but got stuck, some poor soul tried driving downtown with their travel trailer (no idea why as there weren’t any campgrounds that I noticed), and ended up hitting one of the race arches while making a turn, so they ended up blocking both lanes of traffic for about 40 minutes to get that situation resolved.

On the way home we stopped by another mine overlook, this one was called Leonidas: and the nearby town of Eveleth claims this is the world’s largest hockey stick (best picture I could get while driving, it was definitely large):

Saturday was a pretty relaxing day, there was another soccer game in the morning, afterwards Matt and I got in a quick round of disc golf, and then most of the afternoon I spent playing with the kids and napping. Saturday also marked four weeks on the road already!

Travel Day 1 - St. Paul, MN

On Sunday it was time to start making my way west. First day was a relatively short 3.5 hour, 213 mile drive to a state park just outside St. Paul. This was mostly an uneventful drive, other than I did learn that the Lebanon Hills State Park Campground is not located at the Lebanon Hills State Park. The state park had a beach area, and since it was almost 100 degrees, the park was packed. Fortunately there was a loop in the driveway so I was able to get out of there safely, or else I might have had a situation like the guy driving around Duluth with a trailer. I loved my campsite, it was long and flat enough that I didn’t even have to unhook the truck: I had my first minor hiccup while setting up here, I didn’t pay enough attention to how far my slide would be out, and the water spigot was situated such that I wouldn’t be able to have my hose attached while the slide was out. I did notice before I brought the slide out and did any damage, but not until after I had leveled the RV. Since it was 100 degrees out and I was only staying for one night, I elected to hook the hose up, dump some water into my fresh tank, and then remove the hose to get the slide out. Not ideal, but it worked out and was a good reminder to more carefully check that in the future.

The campground had a nice trail around a pond that I walked once it started cooling down a bit:

Travel Day 2 - Mitchell, SD

Monday was a little bit longer of a drive day, it took 5.5 hours to go right under 300 miles. It still sucks not being able to take advantage of an 80 MPH speed limit, and I didn’t even get decent gas mileage going slower because I was mostly driving into the wind. There was also a longer section of interstate that was under construction (maybe 20ish miles), so they had both eastbound and westbound right next to each other, so every larger vehicle that went by pushed me around a bit since the trailer basically acts like a big sail. Really not a fun day of driving. I did get a nice surprise though (or it’s stalking, not really sure), Tracy and Cody happened to be passing through Mitchell shortly after I got there, so they stopped for a visit. We ended up going to dinner and they crashed in my trailer, since their plan was tent camping but it was still a 90 degree day.

Travel Day 3 - Sturgis, SD

Tuesday was another longer drive day, it was a little over five hours to go just over 300 miles. All of my complaints from Monday apply again, although at least today was less windy, so it wasn’t as bad in the construction zones where opposing traffic was only separated by a cone. The RV park spaces are close together, but other than that are pretty nice: I am finding that I prefer a concrete/asphalt pad at least for the trailer, and gravel instead of dirt is nice.

I had a more serious issue with my trailer tonight while setting up, my slide out was racking and only able to go out a few inches. Not really the kind of thing I wanted to deal with after driving, so I did have to sit down and relax for a few minutes before I could get in the right frame of mind for troubleshooting. Fortunately the “fix” in the manual was pretty easy, you just manually assist the motors by pushing out the side of the slide that was getting stuck. I’m not really satisfied with that, but will save the additional research/fixes for another day this week.

Gas Update

I think I found a pretty good balance these last few days of driving, it does suck setting up and tearing down every day, but 5-6 hours of driving seems like a pretty good (and safe) limit for me pulling the trailer. I have done a lot of driving recently, almost 2000 miles since I left Michigan eight days ago, compared to “only” another 2000 since I left home four weeks ago. Since the original trip planning software said the whole trip was going to be about 9800 miles, I was expecting to drive a little bit more than that knowing there would be plenty of sightseeing miles too, but it is safe to say I am going to absolutely crush that number. Especially when towing, I’ve stopped for gas a lot earlier than I normally would. Once I get down to about half a tank, if I see a gas station that looks like it is reasonably easy to get in and out of, I have been taking it. Could probably do less stopping if I planned out my drive days and where to get gas better, but that is a lot of work that I haven’t taken on yet. Fill-ups since last update:

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