The North Shore

The first part of our vacation was spent on the North Shore -- the area of Minnesota from Duluth on up, that borders Lake Superior. Though I believe I visited Duluth once when I was very young, I had never vacationed in the area, and neither had Sherry & the kids.

I posted some of the photos on Facebook when I got back, but here are some highlights again, with a few different shots.

Our first site to see was Split Rock Lighthouse. We paid to take a short tour of the lighthouse itself, and then wandered the park to take in the views. I could not get enough. We found some very strange pink and black rocks on the shore, we skipped some stones, and we marveled at the majesty of the cliff and simplicity of design of the lighthouse.


The next day we made a trip to Gooseberry Falls. This was the second of our state park visits -- we did one each day. We prepared for the Falls as if we would be hiking all day, but Gooseberry is not like that. There are easy, short trails to the main falls, and with the water running well, but not too high, we could get right out into the stream and goof around, climb about, and enjoy ourselves. The sky was not quite as clear on this day as it would be every other day, but we had no rain, and the temperature was quite nice.


We decided to spend a day up in Grand Marais -- we had heard it contained art & craft stores -- so we drove another hour along the shore. On the way, we stopped at Palisade Head, a very high steep cliff along the shore. Spectacular views. Scary, too, since there were people climbing the face, and tourists (like us) getting very close to the edge.


Grand Marais was worth the drive. We ate lunch at Sven & Ole's Pizza, which we had been told would be very good, and it was. And we wandered from gallery to antique shop to craft store. As we completed our day, we stopped at a couple of shops in Beaver Bay (we stayed in a nice room at Cove Point Resort in Beaver Bay) and bought some souvenirs. And we also enjoyed time around the resort.



Monday before we left the area, we visited Tettegouche State Park. Though no one had recommended it to us, we will definitely recommend it to others. Here we finally got to do some serious hiking, up and down nicely kept trails, to see waterfalls. This reminded me of our last trip to hike Halfdome in Yosemite, and it also reminded me of how much I need to get in shape before we do Halfdome again next summer!




[732]