The L.L. Smith

Last week, my mom took me and three of the kids on the L.L. Smith, a research boat operated by the University of Minnesota Sea Grant.

Last year, my mom took me, Nora, Keenan and Zak and our boat departed from Barker's Island in Superior. This year, she took me, Nora, Keenan and Adrea and we departed from Two Harbors. Here, you can see the kids in the foreground and the L.L. Smith docked at the breakwater.

The captain took us to a depth of 300 feet. At that point, the research folks brought up water and soil samples for us to study. Here, the kids check out the soil from the bottom of Lake Superior. It was really muddy!

This was, by far, the favorite activity. The kids call it "fishing." The pans have water samples in them, and the kids use eye droppers and tweezers to grab samples, which they transfer to petri dishes.

Then they take the petri dishes into the lab and place them under the microscope. They had so much fun watching the teeny tiny wormy creatures and clams.

I just love these shots of the kids looking into the microscopes. They were fascinated!

Knife Island was completely covered in gulls and cormorants.

It was a great day out on the lake, despite strange weather that changed every few minutes from hot to cold, from rainy to sunny.