Winging It - The Time It Worked

When I start this post I was in Duluth, Minnesota at the annual meeting of the Society of Wetland Scientists and I'd found a large empty ballroom to sit down and collect my thoughts in, and it was great.  I've spent the last week thinking about how little time I give myself to just sit and plan, how that almost always leaves me frantically winging it, and how often things just end up working out.  And this current adventure is a case of that.  As reckless and scary as "winging-it" style travel might seen, it almost always restores my faith in humanity and boosts my confidence a bit.  I'd been in Duluth all week and in some aspects I am woefully unprepared.  I did have my talk mostly prepared, so that's good.  But I had not taken a look at the weather, or even a map before I left, which meant I was unprepared for travel in a large state that is very far north.  It worked out though.  Here are the things I've learned in this week of travel:

1. Catching a 6:30 am flight in SLC the day after a 50-mile bike ride in Logan makes for an absurdly emotional journey.  I cried a little at the SLC airport, thankfully I was emotionally composed by the time I got to security.  I cried a little more during my layover in the Denver airport, which made for an awkward moment for the people sitting next me.  Then I cried a little at the Minneapolis airport, but then became distracted by the babbling women near me who was confused about the time zone change.

2.  Minneapolis is not close to Duluth.  Minnesota is quite a large state.  It takes 2.5 hours to get from one city to the next because they are 140 miles away.  Observe

I had assumed it was ok to fly into Minneapolis because I knew people who were, and if I couldn't catch a ride with one of my people, I'd be able to find something.  Airport shuttles go everywhere, right?  Right.  But I was also able to catch a ride into Duluth Sunday afternoon anyways.

3.  Duluth is at the latitude  46.785873°.  It's still cold there!  Good thing I was cold while packing and brought a fleece.  Here's what I left in Utah

And here's what I found in Duluth

4.  The Google search results for "What is the best way to get from Duluth to the Minneapolis airport" will return a good option.  I had to catch a 2:30 am shuttle to the airport to make my 6:30 am flight to Denver and an 8:15 flight to Salt Lake City.  I mentioned the emotions involved in 6:30 flights earlier, those same feelings do not apply to 2:30 flights, I was too tired to feel much of anything but tired.

5.  Sometimes people make bad carpet decisions.  I spent the last half hour of the Women in Wetlands breakfast trying to figure out whether my mind was playing tricks on me or if there really was a vagina pattern on the carpet.  I asked a few people later what their thoughts were and they concurred: Carpet Vaginas.  Go ahead, try to get that phrase out of your head.

6.  Minnesotans are as nice as people say.  Really, most people are  nice.   I met people throughout the conference who loved talking about wetlands and research.  I also met a lot of people along the way to the conference who just wanted to chat about the weather or Lake Superior or pizza.  At a student mixer (a thing I would never have attended if my friends hadn't been there) I met a grad student from North Carolina who I talked about birds with, and ended up going along on a birding trip with later, facilitated by a guy from Wisconsin who was at the conference to raise awareness about threats to a turtle species he cared a lot about.  Really, people are great.  And I might have seen Trumpeter swan in Minnesota because I believe in winging it and went along for the ride.  Downtown Duluth also has some creative signage:

My last day in Duluth I got some to enjoy the beach.  It was a little chilly, but being near water is essentially soothing and I had a great time.  Below are some of the pictures I took of Lake Superior, along with some fun facts about the greatest of the Great Lakes.

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake by area and the third largest by volume.  It accounts for 10% of the worlds freshwater supply.  It's huge!

Lake Superior covers 31,280 square miles, that's large enough to fit all the Great Lakes in plus a few more.  The average depth of the lake is 483 ft, the deepest point is 1,333 feet below the surface.

Should you spread the water of Lake Superior across North America, you could flood the continent with up to 3 feet of water.

Lake Superior is large enough to affect local weather patterns.  For Duluth this means warm winters and cool summers.  

Storms on Lake Superior can create waves as large as those seen in the ocean, but they come at a faster frequency.

Seasonal storms lead to waves over 20 feet high; the weather on the lake is responsible for over 350 shipwrecks.  Many of these shipwrecks are now protected in underwater preserves (which I wish I had known before I left).  This is not a picture of a shipwreck, but some kind of gravel dock that could not withstand Lake Superior weather.  

Lake Superior itself is oligotrophic, supporting fewer species of fish than the other lakes.  Superior is the cleanest of the Great Lakes, with average water visibility of 27 feet, but some places visibility is up to 100 feet.  However, throughout the entire system, over 160 plant and animal species have been introduced, primarily through ballast water.

The retention time for water in the lake is 191 years.  That's a long time (unless you start looking at terminal lakes)

There are about 80 species of fish in the lake, which are stratified by temperature, which generally decreases with depth.  The walleye makes good fish cakes.  I love fish cakes.

The beginnings of Lake Superior were basalt deposits that flowed 1.1 to 1.2 billion years ago at the mid-continent rift.  These flows settled into a small basin and accumulated water and sediments over millenia.

Lake Superior as we know it now was created by glaciers more than 10,000 years ago and is currently supplied by more than 300 streams and rivers.  It would take those rivers almost 200 years to refill the lake, should it drain.

The lake shore is known for agate beaches, basalt intrusions and sedimentary formations.  I was sure excited to find this nice sandy beach.  

Dune grass here is pretty hardy, it stabilizes the sand dunes by binding together sand grains.  It can withstand waves and wind, but is sensitive to compaction from walking.  So watch where you walk.  

Migrating birds of prey are "funneled" through Lake Superior, the area may see as many as 100,000 raptors a year.  I saw an osprey while I was there, but I was really more charmed by these little shorebirds than anything else.  

Lake Superior is actually connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawerence seaway's series of locks and canals.  This bridge is an aerial lift bridge that allows large vessels to pass between the bay and the larger lake.  

Shipping on the Great Lakes moves bulk materials like iron ore, grains, and limestone from the interior of the United States toward the ocean.  

So there you have it.  Lake Superior is awesome. Go visit.  I recommend visiting later in the summer, when things might be warmer.