After Joey fell on the saw and cut his hand, we found ourselves in Ely, MN with two extra days and nothing to do.  We spent Friday morning at a laundromat and the Dorothy Moulter museum (and I just about cried the entire way though it, even though it’s not sad…I think I was still a little fragile from the whole “Joey almost died” thing) where we had a delightful tour guide who actually knew Dorothy Moulter before she died!  (And when I found that out it was pretty much over; the floodgates opened.  My brothers made fun of me later.)

Next item on the agenda: the Soudan Mine.  (Well, Mom, Sister, and Laura went to see some wolves at a wolf sanctuary but there are no pictures from that because the camera’s battery was dead.)

When we arrived at the mine, Joey and I accidentally got ourselves on the Physics Lab tour, and almost went down 3,000 feet into the earth with them.  Just in time, though, someone realized that we were in the wrong group and shoved us off to go find the other three.

Joey was disappointed, he wanted to see the Physics lab.

Twenty minutes later, after watching a really cheesy video on the mine made in the 80s, we were all wearing our fashionable red hard hats and ready to descend into the bowels of the earth.

Joey and I missed the memo that Brother was taking a picture, I think.

Not sure what I’m looking at here, but clearly it’s not the camera.

3,000 feet in a rattly mine shaft elevator later, we arrived at the main loading area.  We got into the mine train and shivered in our seats until they closed the doors and the train started moving.  (Then we really shivered! It’s cold down inside the earth.)

Brother and Pops had a car to themselves.

Me, The Kid, Stephen and Joey shared our car with Matt, he worked at the museum and tried not to laugh at us as we yelled and messed around during the 5 minute ride in the dimly lit tunnel.  Stephen looks miserable.

I got scared once.  Everybody else egged me on.

So there are about 50 pictures from inside of the mine and, if I were Brother, I would have posted all of them.  But they all looked like the same piece of rock to me, so I skipped them.  The tour was interesting, though.

When it was over, we all piled back into the train cars and buzzed back up to the elevator.  We got the lead car, so as the train chugged along we all sang – at the top of our Laird lungs – “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!”  It was great.  (Well, Joey and Stephen didn’t have Laird lungs, but they still sang too.)

The only part I didn’t like was the horrible elevator shaft ride we had to take to get down there and back.  It felt like we were going 100 miles an hour, and we were at a 5% incline, so staying on your feet was a challenge.

Here we are in the sunshine again.

OK, so our tour guide was the cat’s meow.  He was really funny and unique and he could spin a story so well he’d make you cry.  (I know because I almost did.)  He was telling about how his dad used to work in the Soudan Mine and how he gave up his hearing to provide for his family, etc. etc. etc. and how kids these days are losing their hearing to listen to music loud on their iPods, and there I am trying not to cry, because Brother and The Kid are within poking distance…and they were still teasing me for my Dorothy Moulter waterworks earlier that day.  (Brothers, I tell you what.)

This is our tour guide.  He looks like a mountain man.

This is a Larry Car.  We took the picture especially for Gramps because his name is Larry.

The sign said “keep out”…so we got right in.

This is the place where the iron ore would have gotten dumped into the trains.  I didn’t go out there, though, because The Kid got distracted by this set of stairs just to the left of this picture, and he said “Let’s go down there and make them all jealous!”  So we did.

We found this really cool railway hopper, which you can’t see much of in the picture.  But just know that it was impressive.

We look very mighty, don’t we?

We climbed up and were going to get IN the train car, but Brother’s camera battery died just then and we didn’t feel like finishing if it wasn’t going to be on camera.  So we climbed back up the stairs and asked if everyone was jealous of us that we got to go down there.  They weren’t, really.

The clock said 5:30 when we got in the car, and we had 6:00 reservations in Ely, at 30 minute drive.  So we hauled it and were just in the nick of time.

After eating a very tasty meal on at the Chocolate Mousse we visited the shop next door. Joey cut his toe on a display and was bleeding all over the place, so we had to dig out the first aid kit AGAIN.  Poor Joey.  Around 8:00 we packed into our stinky vehicles (damp tents and portage shoes smell like death) and drove to our hotel in Duluth.

In the morning, we tried to take a scenic drive but all wound up getting carsick.  We ditched that idea and headed for the touristy spots down by the harbor.  But first we all had to take coupley pictures.

Aww, cute.

Sick.

Sick.

Normal.

We headed over to the raising bridge to watch this ginormous boat go through.  We waved to all the people on the deck, and they waved back.  The thing was huge, like the entire size of DTS.  Maybe bigger, actually.

The bridge raised far, far above our heads…but I forgot to get a picture of it.  Sorry.  There was a long line of cars waiting to drive over it when it finally came back down.

I think this bird looks mental.

Joey bought me cotton candy because he knows how much I love it.  We ate it while we rode the fifty-cent trolley around to get a view of the harbor and Lake Superior.

My parents look pleased with themselves that they have all of their kids in one place at the same time.

We saw a place we thought we’d stop for lunch “The Original Coney Island”.  How the Original Coney Island wound up in Duluth, MN, I don’t know.  But it did.

The Kid drank his Mountain Dew with gusto.

Sister pouted.

I had to share Onion Rings with Brother and Laura and I only got three, mostly because Brother hogged them.

Everyone was supposed to be eating something in this picture, but Mom, Stephen, Pops and Laura missed the memo.  On second thought, I think Pops is chewing.  (I wonder if Stephen maybe didn’t like his meal?  He looks out of sorts.  Muahahaha.)

This picture gave Brother the willies.  So I posted it here so he’d have to look at it again.

Pops tried on some great hatwear in the Duluth Pack Store.

This one’s my favorite.

I hope Laura bought this hat because it’s cute!

Last stop in Duluth – the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory!  We made Sister pose with this bear because she hates bears and thinks they’re scary.

I LOVE CHOCOLATE!

We buzzed off to Cloquet where we had Chinese and birthday celebrations.  Then we drove down about 40 miles north of the Cities where we stayed at a hotel and watched Michael Phelps’ team compete in the relay. We were screaming so loud I’m surprised we didn’t get kicked out.