A Fishy “tale” in Duluth

Akaisha and Flynn

Akaisha having her solids on the road

At the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota are two sister cities, Superior and Duluth. Duluth is a port city and the second largest city located on Lake Superior. The twin city Superior and Duluth are the Great Lakes’ largest port transporting coal, iron ore and grain. Duluth happens to be a great tourist destination, even though we didn’t find some areas of the city very pretty. But it does have one of America’s only all-freshwater aquarium. The city is also the starting point for Minnesota’s famous North Shore drive (which we are on at the moment).

Our three girls!

Kit, Flynn, Jai and new friend Andrew.

Chayse having fun.

We loved the Great Lakes Aquarium as it was so educational for the children and had many interactive exhibits. In particular I thought the 3-D waterway exhibit where kids could play with the boats on the various loch systems, was particularly good as it showed the path of water flowing from Toronto into the USA. It allowed children to work the Lochs by first-hand experience. Did you know that Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake by “surface area” on earth. Pretty awesome to see in real life.

Kit learning about Lochs on the Great Lakes

A boat, some water....and Chayse is entertained for hours!

Fun for all the family!

The aquariums were very well done and allowed kids and adults alike to follow underwater by operating a mini camera.

We saw many Sturgeons and Flynn has provided me with a few facts to share with you. “Sturgeons are 9 foot (in the aquarium we saw), and they can get up to 28 foot in Russia. They live in deep, cold freshwater lakes.” By Flynn

Trev added that the caviar is greatly sought after and as a result, Sturgeon stocks are very depleted in the Great Lakes. The young ones get poached before ready to breed, but sturgeons take about 20 years before they start breeding. They go to the streams to breed and thats where fisherman catch them easily to harvest the eggs. Genetics are such that they were around when the dinosaurs were on earth.

Sturgeon in amongst a myriad of freshwater fish

In front of the huge aquarium

A stingray in the "touch tank"

We were in time to hear a talk about Otters and see them swim and eat in an enclosure. There were a range of exhibits including birdlife and other animals around the Great Lakes area.

The Otter Enclosure

An eagle

Imagine meeting a "real" moose

The kids (and we adults) had fun mucking around with the “Masters of Disguise” exhibit. The idea was to show how easily animals and water creatures can camouflage with their surroundings to disguise themselves.

Kaitlin and Flynn learning how to camouflage themselves

This is how it's done!

Masters of Disguise!

The Aquarium wasn’t the only attraction to hold our interest. Next door was Duluth’s version of the  Oktober Beer Festival. Trev took the kids to have a look at some of the fun activities to do, whilst I took the opportunity to sort some things in the RV.

Oktober BeerFest (in September) at Duluth.

Akaisha and Flynn

In true "German" style!

Kit and Chayse came back with a spider painted on their cheeks. I nearly fell over when Trev said they were charged $4 each for that! (He thought it was going to be free).  Kaitlin can do better than that for free!

Kit with his "face painting"

Chayse with his "creation"!!!

After a pretty full day, we went back to our KOA Campsite in Cloquet (20 minutes from Duluth) where we built another fire.

The kids were very excited at this camping ground as it was the weekend and there were a lot of other children their ages to play with. And if you thought our family was large, our kids made friends with a family that has 15 kids in it (ranging from 26 years to 2 years). We didn’t ask if they were a blended family, but our kids were suitably impressed anyway.

Meeting "new" friends

Around the campfire