Sunday, May 1
My friend needed to head back to Minneapolis, and I needed to head north, but first we had a leisurely breakfast in our bnb. The plan had been initially to find some place to hike but the rain never let up, so we ditched that plan.
She dropped me at Union Depot in St. Paul a few hours before my bus was scheduled to arrive.
The St. Paul Union Depot is gorgeous, I saw at least two wedding parties and a maternity photoshoot while I was there. It’s also, apparently, located in an economically disadvantaged part of the city. The public restrooms adjacent to the great hall were closed completely. A security guard told me without prompting that the restrooms were closed because “people were doing drugs in the bathroom.” Closing the bathroom seems like an inefficient way to solve that problem. I had to travel down two escalators and down a hallway to get to the tiny, open restroom. Not only was that a huge inconvenience to me, but when I got there I found a man doing drugs in the women’s room. (He ran off as soon as he saw me.)
Point is, St. Paul chose the least effective way to deal with a problem. Instead of offering supportive services to people who have substance abuse issues, and likely no homes, they just closed the bathrooms for everyone. This is disrespectful to every traveler who passes through St. Paul, and it’s disrespectful to every St. Paul resident who is experiencing homelessness. Shame on whoever made that move, I hope someone sues them for discrimination (which is what this is.)
My bus arrived just a few minutes behind schedule, but it quickly rolled north past marshy landscapes, and north woods suburbs. I arrived at the Duluth Transit Center around 9 p.m., a cozy little spot nestled into some of the larger buildings in Downtown Duluth.
Getting a ride from the Duluth Transit Center is not hard. I arrived into the bus depot around 9 p.m. on a Sunday, and while I wouldn’t call it a happenin’ place, there were signs of life. A security guard warned me that rideshares weren’t easy to get in Duluth, but I managed to get one in about 10 minutes. There are also a fair number of cab companies that are easily googable in Duluth.
My rideshare dropped me off at a heckuva cute early 20th-century mansion-turned-BnB. I stayed in the Edwin Hewitt Room of the Thompson House on Third Street. My room had a view of the lake from the bed, and a clawfoot bathtub big enough for me to lie down in. I saw almost no other people there the whole time, which is normally something I look for in a camping spot, but got in a dang mansion this time.
Monday, May 2
My goal in going to Duluth in the first place was to spend some time flipping through some undigitized documents at the University of Minnesota Duluth. I’m still processing all the information I turned over while I was there, and I’ll be happy to tell you all about it when the time is right, but the short story is I didn’t get to see very many of the sights in Duluth. And I had a whole google map made in case I had time! I saw almost none of the things I hoped to see, but I found everything I came there to find.
During the day, I flipped through pages in a library surrounded by students stressed over finals week. In the evenings after they would kick me out of the library, with about four good hours of daylight left, I’d take some time to wander around Duluth. The first day I was there caught a ride to Duluth’s Aerial Life Bridge – right there at the edge of all the tourist stuff. I was there just before tourist season started, and the week graduates celebrated their achievements by taking robe-clad group photos in front of the bridge. Which makes sense, it’s pretty emblematic of the city. I then walked around the touristy spots, what few were open, just to see what I could see.
Eventually, I wandered north on the Lake Walk. I spent some time picking rocks on the 12th Street Beach before having dinner at Va Bene. This Italian restaurant is one of the highest-rated in the city, and even before tourist season started, had a lengthy wait for parties without reservations. However, I learned that if you arrive this time of year as a solo traveler, you can probably walk right in and get the corner table, without waiting, and sit at a table with a full 200-degree view of Lake Superior. So that was cool. I had the nicest glass of red wine (Aglianico) to sip while I viewed life on a vast freshwater sea.
The day I was there the lake was calm as glass, a diner behind me commented you could “canoe on it without fear” that day. He was right, it was a glassy sea of calm, soft ripples, in all directions. Ships loaded heavy with ore slumped lazily offshore, waiting for their turn in the Soo Locks.
The clouds were low and grey as two fishermen slowly trawled. If the Keweenaw peninsula didn’t cut across the horizon the sky would have blended with the sea.
Offshore a family of mallards drifted noiselessly. Indoors my fellow diners dined at various volumes. It’s a cold spring this year, and while I was still dressed in a hat, scarf, and jacket, Duluth residents dressed in anything from shorts and flip flops, to full winter gear. Maybe some of them must have thick skin, but it’s mostly got to be stubbornness, right? The sudden rooster tail of a speedboat briefly broke the mirror-finish of the lake. After dessert, I decided that I’d be hard-pressed to agree that Georgia O’Keeffe wasn’t painting the space where a great lake meets the sky when she wasn’t painting flowers.
Full of cheese, wine, gelato, and heavy sauce, I made the decision to walk the two miles back to my bnb. Not because two miles is far, but because I realized too late, that everything in Duluth is uphill. That was on me, I should have thought of that. So, after walking two miles uphill with a food baby, I realized why it must be that there is no bikeshare in Duluth. The whole dang city is uphill. (There is a scooter share, but I didn’t see it widely used outside the Lake Walk area.)
Tuesday, May 3
I had such a productive day in the library that immediately after they kicked me out at 4 p.m. I had a car take me to Canal Park Brewing so I could get all my thoughts onto a blank Word doc while they were still fresh. Canal Park was kind enough to let me camp at one of their nice tables, with a view of the lake, for entirely too long and never even acted annoyed so I am grateful. I tikka tikka’d away at my laptop for nearly three hours and I felt alive, it was great. By the end I was lightly drunk, well fed, and mentally drained. So I went back to my bnb, talked to my husband on the phone, and fell asleep.
Wednesday, May 4
By the time they kicked me out of the library I realized that the weather the last two days had been absolutely glorious. I’d missed it all. The sun was out, and things got as high as the 60s. Back in Chicago, they were on day 46 or so without sun, and I was wasting the sunshine indoors. That day, I decided to do the smart thing and walk three miles downhill, to see what I could see.
Walking around is one of the best ways to get to know a place on its own terms and I got to know a lot about Duluth. There are creeks that cut across the neighborhoods and highways, which means most people are never very far from real wildlife. I saw deer grazing in people’s front yards. I saw plenty of ravens and gulls. I hiked about 500 feet of the Superior Hiking Trail, so I probably deserve a medal for that.
I wound up having dinner at Fitger’s Brewhouse, and needed to put my hat and scarf on by the time I got close to the lake. When I was done, I called a rideshare to bring me to my bnb, because I wasn’t feeling the uphill hike this time.
Thursday, May 5
The sun brightened my bnb so early that I woke up well before my alarm every morning. I rearranged the room so the comfy chair I sat in while I drank my coffee each morning gave me the maximum possible lake views. Getting up so early gave me the chance to stand outside on the private attached deck, feeling the cold spring air on my skin. Earlier that week, I’d had a leisurely morning and was able to run a bath for myself while the chilly morning light filtered through the windows.
But on this day, I had to travel. All my laundry was filthy, my camera battery was dead, my snacks were all eaten, and all this made packing everything into my 65L bag incredibly easy. I shoved my laptop, notebooks, remaining snacks, and knitting into my backpack-purse, which had been my go-to carry-all for the last four days. After shoving everything into two bags, miraculously, I headed downstairs to vacate my room. I called four cab companies, and the nearest rideshare was 20 minutes away. I stayed less than a mile from the library, but it was a mile uphill and I was now carrying two heavy backpacks. Walking wouldn’t be impossible, but it sure wouldn’t be pleasant. Luckily, a rideshare driver who happened to be starting her workday found me and brought me to the library.
I spent the day reading old newspaper articles in the largely vacant library. By the time I was done, it was time for me to head toward the Duluth Transit Center. It’s kismet how that worked out. I had no trouble finding a ride to the center at that time of day, and no trouble at the Transit Center. My Amtrak ticket also paid for my transit on Jefferson Bus Lines, which runs daily service from Duluth to Minneapolis-St. Paul. The driver was friendly, my luggage was well-treated, my fellow riders were largely silent, and there was even an outlet for my phone. I caught one last rideshare of the day from the St. Paul Union Depot to my bff’s house in Minneapolis. I fell asleep so hard that night, you guys.
Friday, May 6
I awoke to a notification that my train was delayed. It was super delayed. It was supposed to roll out of St. Paul at 8 a.m., and it didn’t until 1 p.m.
That morning at my bff’s house gave me the chance to share my journey on social media, while she worked in an adjacent office. I also took her puppy on a walk. (If you’re seeing this Kim, please tell Hazel she’s very, very good.) I caught a rideshare from her place to Union Depot and got to make friends with two fellow travelers in the waiting room. Two women, traveling separately, both of whom had never been on an Amtrak train before. Lucky them! The long ride from St. Paul to Chicago is just beautiful from the seat of an Amtrak train.
As you roll out of St. Paul you follow the path of the Mississippi River for quite a ways. The landscape alternates between marshy paradise and rocky outcrop after rocky outcrop. You travel through the Driftless region of Wisconsin, which was spared from the glaciers, and so has a gently rolling landscape that, at times, remodels itself into impenetrable rock. At Tunnel City, Wisconsin the train car goes pitch black as your car skims through a limestone mountain, in a tunnel first carved by dynamite in 1847. By the time we rolled through Milwaukee, the setting sun bounced off the glassy windows and rivers of the city. As the sun sunk low and orange in the sky we traveled past the unmistakably flat landscape of northern Illinois. Ah, home. I’m glad I was smart enough to book a ticket to Glenview, because I live in Jefferson Park, and technically that’s the closest Amtrak station to my house. I was exhausted, and had no trouble getting one last rideshare all the way to my home. I got there just before 9 p.m. The driver, who was the best of them all, refused to let me carry my 65L bag, and delivered it to my door against my protests. It was nice. When I opened the door, my dog suddenly stopped borking and looked at me like she never thought she would see me again.
Transit summary
I took a lot of rideshares, you guys. I know that. I was also on a trip that should have been at least two separate trips, and one of them required a laptop. I walked as often as it made sense for what I was doing, but I wasn’t there to punish myself or compete with anyone else. Duluth does have a municipal bus service, but I was there with a mission, and didn’t take the time to learn how it works. I probably should have. But I also got to know a couple of really nice rideshare drivers. Including one guy who I had twice, and he’s the kind of guy who turns the Pantera down to a conversational volume so you can discuss the temperature of the lake and where best to camp around Duluth, so I obviously think he’s great.
Considering the great distance that I did travel and how 98% of that distance was covered via transit, I am willing to give myself a pass on this. There’s an adage in journalism that “perfect is the opposite of good.” It means that if you keep writing and rewriting your article over and over again until it’s “perfect” you’ll end up missing deadline, which is the opposite of good. So I could try and do a 100% transit-perfect trip, but for the breadth and goals of this trip, that would make things challenging. I can only show up where I need to be as the person that I am, and the person that I am is not as young as she used to be. I could make excuses, but a huge, Midwest-spanning, multidimensional trip would be hard to plan if I was taking a car, so since a 100% transit trip would have been extra super hard, (and sometimes dangerous in certain settings or places) I’d be setting myself up for failure in many ways. And that’s the opposite of good. So an imperfect transit trip, with last-mile support from rideshare drivers when I’m especially burdened with luggage, I’m going to round up to at the very least “good.” Maybe “pretty good.” I sure had a good time, and came back refreshed and full of ideas. If I’m not updating this blog as often, it’s probably because I’m writing. You can always drop me a DM on Instagram @ThirdCoastHikes if you’ve got something you think I should know about.
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