Boundary Waters Vacation, Day 1

Last week, Jane and I took our annual fishing trip to Hungry Jack Outfitters and Cabins. Our first official vacation stop was the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth. We got there half an hour before we had arranged to meet Diane and Tom, who were driving up from St. Paul. Jane and I walked around a little. Jane sat on a bench by the entryway while I walked around the building toward the harbor. 

Jane sitting on the bench outside the Great Lakes Aquarium

The Aquarium had a number of bronze statues around. I liked this beaver with a canoe paddle.

Beaver and canoe paddle sculpture

A cruise boat had just come under the aerial lift bridge. The bridge was slowly coming down after it.

Cruise boat coming through the aerial lift bridge

Here it is almost to its lowest position.

Bridge almost down

When Diane and Tom got there, we paid our admission, $17.99 for adults and $12.99 for seniors. And this would be because $18 is too much? Can’t they just charge $20 and be done with it? How many pennies do they give out in a day?

“Everyone just uses plastic,” Diane explained. “Then it doesn’t matter.”

Feeding time with scuba divers would begin in 13 minutes at the Isle Royale tank. We watched the river otters playing and then found seats near the Isle Royale tank. It was filled with large fish including one sturgeon that was 5.5 feet long and 37 years old, according to the docent. While the fish did look really big, I would not have guessed 5 feet.

Feeding time at the Isle Royale Tank

The docent explained the different species to us. Rainbow trout were introduced to the Great Lakes because people like their bright red sides. They look nice when the fish is stuffed and mounted. Even though they are not native, they are not invasive and therefore not a problem to the ecosystem. The lake trout is boring by comparison. The brown trout has red fins, but the diagnostic feature is the stunning white stripes on the leading edge of each fin.

The fish were matched for size and temperament “so there wouldn’t be any trouble.” I thought the docent might mean predation as well as bullying. Several of the fish had nobs on their lower lip. I thought that was probably from bumping into the glass.

After a few minutes, we saw feet at the top of the two-story tank. Two divers were entering. One was a staff person. The other was a volunteer. They carried mesh bags full of food. The docent explained that the fish learned to associate the divers with food and encouraged us to watch how the behavior of the fish changed.

I whispered to Jane, “It will only be fun until someone loses and ear.”

There was no danger of that, however, because the divers were completely covered with dry suits, a necessity in the 52° water. Even with the dry suits, the divers could not stay down more than an hour. The fish swarmed the divers. I saw one fish clamp its jaws firmly on the mesh bag. The sturgeon sense food with the barbels that surround their mouth. They nuzzled right up to the divers, scanning their bodies. We should not be alarmed, however, because they have no teeth. The divers pulled small fish from the mesh bags one at a time and feed them to individual fish. They put fish right in the sturgeons’ mouths. It looked like the sturgeons sucked the divers thumb before letting go.

I played with a giant wave tank. There were levers to raise and lower four sections of the lake bottom as well as knobs to adjust wave frequency. Kate should have one of those for Oceanography!

Giant wave tank with adjustable bottom--you can see the parts that move just below the water surface

Upstairs had areas devoted to vertebrates and invertebrates. There were life-sized statues of a moose and a caribou.

Me by a life size sculpture of a moose. A moose really is that big.

I found this display on insect mouth parts particularly fascinating because while I was raising tadpoles, I noticed that the mosquito larva by-catch had fuzz around their mouths. It looked like they had a fungal infection, but now I know that they are collectors. In this photo, the mouth parts shown from left to right are predators, scrapers, collectors, and shredders.

Insect mouth parts

We ate lunch at Grandma’s, where we did our real catching up at lunch. Diane was headed to the South Dakota Badlands to do field work on Monday. Temperatures were supposed to be in the 100’s. Ug.

We said goodbye and drove to Grand Marais. It was the Art Fest weekend, and downtown was packed. We found a parking spot by Sydney’s, but the line was almost to the street and neither of us were hungry. We left without custard.

The Gunflint trail greeted us with a carpet of invasive species, such as ox-eye daisy, orange hawkweed, and birdfoot trefoil. Even the invasive species are cheerful in the Boundary Waters! 

Cheerful invasive species

The lupine were also blooming. They too can get out of control, but they sure are pretty.

Lupines

The cabin seemed the same except that I had a lovely new light cover in my bedroom. Jane was jealous, since her room didn't have one. Nancy works a lot in glass these days. I wondered if she had put the flowers on the fixture, but the whole week went by and I forgot to ask. 

New light cover

We spent the evening getting settled and trying to stay up later than 7:30. We made it to 8:30, which seemed like a more normal bedtime. The white-throated sparrows serenaded us to sleep. No loons, though.