Are There Things To Do On A Rainy Day In Duluth?

You bet there are. After driving around a few neighborhoods filled with Victorian homes on a hill overlooking Lake Superior, my sister Susan, cousins John and Annette and I toured Glensheen, the Historic Congdon Estate, located on London Road along the shores of Lake Superior. This estate, situated on 12 waterfront acres, was built in 1905 as the family home of Chester Adgate Congdon. It was built at a cost equivalent to 22 million dollars in today's money. This house is indeed quite impressive. After the tour, I took the photograph on the left of John and Annette in the backyard garden.

At the entrance, where the docent gave us a brief introduction to the history of the house, I noticed a sign saying that the family wanted to keep the focus on the house itself and the early 20th Century, and not on the infamous murders that happened there. What? Infamous Murders?  That is exactly the wrong way to keep people from focusing on murders. Especially when there was a stack books titled 'Will to Murder' in the gift store, with a lurid summary of the events on the back cover. It seems that Elisabeth, the youngest daughter of Chester Congdon, had inherited the mansion back in 1950. On the night of June 27, 1977, due to a stroke, she was confined to a wheelchair, and was in the care of a night nurse, Velma Pietila. Pietila used to be her regular nurse before her retirement, but was there that night filling in for another nurse. The next morning, Velma was found beaten to death with a candlestick, and Elisabeth smothered to death with a pillow. The motive for the crime was made to look like robbery. However, the evidence pointed to Elisabeth's adopted daughter Marjorie, whose trust fund had been wiped out due to overspending, but who would inherit 8 million dollars when Elisabeth died, along with her second husband Roger Caldwell. How can you not think about that as you tour the house? In any case, I took the photograph on the right of the gardens from the breakfast nook near the dining room.

Annette called a family friend who lives near Minneapolis and asked what people do on a rainy day in Duluth, and was told they hang out at Grandma's Saloon and Grill in the Canal Park District. And so, after touring the mansion, we headed there for a lunch of very good Chicken Wild Rice Soup. Besides it's funky atmosphere, which I captured in the photograph on the left, the bar on the second floor has a great view of the Aerial Lift Bridge, a local landmark in Duluth.

The Aerial Lift Bridge, seen in the photograph on the right that I took from the bar's outside deck, is a steel bridge built in 1905 whose deck can be lifted 135 feet to allow the passage of large ships into the Duluth Harbor Basin. Evidently there is some sort of app (naturally, since there seems to be an app for everything these days) that tells you when ships will pass under that bridge, but we couldn't find it at the time. And besides, with the waves as strong as they were that day, if a ship did try to pass through, it would most likely wind up inside Grandma's, heading for our table. But I must say, I did like that outdoor patio, where there was a long shelf along the rail with chairs set up in front, where you could sit, have a beer, and wait for a ship to pass through. And, of course, after you finish your beer and no ship has passed through, you naturally just order another, expecting a ship to pass through very soon. And when you finish that one and still no ship? I suspect that could turn into a pretty vicious circle, if you let it. A very good reason to find that damn app.