How I spent the weekend

This one was actually taken before the weekend but this is going to be my only chance to post it and I do want to post it because this is about as handsome as the ash trees ever get. This one is Friday morning, I can tell because that green bag at the end of the driveway is related to our Friday trash pick up. I know it is morning because we left home Friday at about noon.

We got home Sunday afternoon (after driving through a SNOW STORM south of Duluth until nearly Forest Lake) to discover that most of the leaves on that tree have given up and are now lying in our yard instead of clinging to the tree.

For that day and a half or so when the ash tree is gorgeous, it is transcendentally gorgeous.

So we went to Duluth.

We have never been in Duluth for the migration.  We have been up to Hawk Ridge at least a few times but never before in the fall.  As recently as two springs ago I think we took a picture at this spot, it is the end of the pavement on the road that leads up to the observation spot at Hawk Ridge.  It is prettier this time than it was the last time we were there.

That marker verifies that in glacial times there was a glacial Lake Duluth occupying the basin now filled by Lake Superior.  However, glacial Lake Duluth at its highest volume reached a level twice as far above sea level as current Lake Superior.  In fact, portions of the current Sky Line Drive in Duluth follow the glacial lake's former beaches.

The road continues from there but within easy walking distance from that point is the main observatory station for the Hawk Ridge Nature Reserve.

It is a wild, wild scene in at least a couple of senses of that word.  We walked up next to that observatory platform and took this photo back towards the lake of the crowd at the edge of the ridge.

The guys on the observatory platform have pretty major spotting telescopes as do several of those people out there at the edge.  The guys on the platform are quasi official so they have clickers on the rail around the platform on which they are keeping count. For example, this is what they had posted on their board while we were there.

We didn't stay for a full hour BUT during the time we were there we personally observed 8 or so bald eagles and at least a couple of dozen red tailed hawks as well as smaller numbers of several lesser hawks.  Mostly they were at a distance but a Cooper's Hawk made a right at the edge of the ridge close in fly by.

It wasn't so much about being able to get a really good close up look at the eagles and hawks as it was about being there and being able to observe that they were, in fact, migrating.  I personally found it to be pretty exhilarating.

Again, using both senses of the word, it was a wild scene.

The fellow traveler loves Brighton Beach, we headed down to that just outside the eastern city limits of Duluth park and natural area.

Those of us raised in Minnesota have a very distinct image of what the North Shore of Lake Superior should be and that photo captures a lot of it.  A rocky shore with a big, big lake and big sky.

This one captures the view up the shoreline towards Two Harbors.

We drove out that way until we came to a road ends construction project.  We stopped on the way back at McQuade.  One of my best friends at the DNR is an engineer who had primary design responsibility for this safe harbor project.  I used to walk into his office to find him going over the drawings for this.  I have seen the drawings hundreds of times, this is the first time I remember actually being out there since it was completed.

The idea is that small craft can be in considerable danger on the big lake if caught too far from harbor when a storm comes up.  Superior is a very unforgiving lake.  What we have here is a couple of stone breakwaters at a spot far from the next nearest possible refuge.

My friend Memos would be the very first to say that this is all temporary, that when the big lake brings one of the megastorms that the big lake is very VERY capable of bringing that all of this will go away.  He only designed the project that they asked him to design.  What they asked him to design is something that will last a long time.  This will last a long time.

But when the big lake comes to take back what belongs to the big lake that puny little sanctuary will be no more.

It rained right about then so we headed back into town.

It was a small squall and by the time we got parked and headed over towards the arena it had turned into a darn nice patch of Saturday afternoon.

Here is the FT leaning on a lamp post on a corner of street underneath the Aerial Lift Bridge and a pretty interesting sky.

I think the local Army Corps office here is a suboffice of the Detroit  district.  I thought others in the Detroit district might find the local office interesting, I also thought it is a pretty nice old brick building still serving a useful purpose.

 Pretty nice Saturday afternoon on the Duluth waterfront.

They don't have Big Red here but they do have light bearing structures on the end of both of the structures delineating the shipping channel and one of them does have a red roof.

We were patient and managed to get the FT posed in relative isolation with this big anchor of the whale back steamer Thomas Wilson.

The Wilson sank after a freak collision with another ship less than a mile out from the ship canal on a calm morning in 1902.  Heavily laden with iron ore, the Wilson sank within minutes after the collision, carrying nine members of her crew to their deaths.

In 1973 scuba divers recovered the anchor and a 60 foot length of anchor chain from 75 feet below the surface of the lake.  The anchor is now on display on the waterfront providing a nice photo prop for the FT.

But here's what we were there for, the hockey.  This picture was taken during warm ups.

Friday night, Gophers 4, UMD nil.

Saturday night, Gophers 6, UMD 3.

55 victories in a row.

Pretty good weekend, we had lots of fun.

In other sports news, FC Nantes has an American playing for them and he contributed mightily to the latest victory by the surprise success story of this years Ligue 1.

AC Ajaccio 0-1 FC Nantes

Nantes stands fourth in the table after 10 of the 38 games of the season schedule.