Day 13: Bridge, Boats, Airplanes, and Candy
Last night, a friendly neighbor shared that there’s a website with the opening schedule for the Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge. Today the times were 11:15 a.m. (a 162m long boat carrying cement powder) and 9:30 p.m. This tip allowed us to plan our adventure away from the RV perfectly to see the bridge in action. We didn’t do much else in town, so it was a quick trip in and out. Kelly was humbled by the hills of Duluth and her subpar manual driving skills, as she watched the kids heads hitting the headrests repeatedly through the side streets getting back out of town.
Last night Rob suddenly remembered that the Cirrus aircraft factory is in Duluth. Even better, it turns out it’s just 10 minutes down the road and does tours only on Wednesday! The tour was full, but we got very lucky that there ended up being four cancelations, so we were able to get in last minute and Rob was able to take a break from his work day at this exact time.
It was super cool to see all the composite pieces of the airplanes waiting to be fitted together at the different stages of the process. They turn out 14 SR-20/22 piston planes and 2.5 SF50 jets a week, with about six weeks total assembly time start to finish. No photos were allowed on the tour, but we snapped a family photo with some Cirrus airplanes parked outside.
When we were driving along the North Shore yesterday, the sign for Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen really caught Nicholas’ eye, and his thorough analysis of the Google reviews sealed the deal for him. So this afternoon the three of us headed out to see what it was all about. We purchased some caramel apples and caramels, and they were all delicious. There was a kid-run lemonade stand across the street, and the boys reminded me that I had previously said we should always stop to support a kid’s business, so we got some to wash down our sweet treats.
The boys ended the evening with another paddleboat ride in the campground lake.
Rob and Kelly ended the evening with laundry and taking apart the fridge to replace the hinge that broke. Working in a small space, without all the right tools, and limited online resources to sort out how to fix something didn’t bring out the best in anyone, but we got it done 🙂
