The Girls in the Family Travel up the North Shore

The boys in the family headed south to take in a Minnesota Twins game with Grandma Robbie and Grandpa Ron, along with Auntie Jennifer and Uncle Joey, and cousins.

The girls decided it would be a good day to head up the North Shore, and we had a terrific day!  We hit our favorite candy store and purchased some magnificent treats.  Our lunch was PIE and ice cream at the Rustic Inn restaurant.  We literally had just pie and ice cream for lunch, and you know, we didn’t feel a bit bad about that because it was a super fun day and we knew we were going to do quite a bit of hiking.

We’ve had a ton of rain, so we knew that waterfalls would be a great place to hike.  We planned to start at Gooseberry, the first park, but when we got there, at 2:00 on Saturday, we had never seen so many cars in the parking lot.  In fact, they were overflowing out of the parking lot out to the highway, because it was a hot Saturday in August, and all the tourists go Gooseberry.  We drove into the parking lot and made a quick unanimous decision to drive out of the parking lot and go somewhere more remote.  We decided to try the High Falls at Tettagouche, because they are farther from the highway and a hike in to the actual falls.  It didn’t disappoint!  There were lots of hikers out, but it was much less crowded, and the water fall was plummeting through.  I have no pictures of that hike, really.

After a warm, sweaty hike, we cooled off at Pebble Beach at Split Rock and ate a bit of supper that we had brought along.  The girls had a great time swimming in the frigid water.  We brought the kayak along on top of the van.  At first I decided it might be too hard to unload and reload it, so I was thinking we would not take it down to use, but in the end, we did.  I went on a little trip around the bay, and so did The Banana, and the three of us managed to actually load it back on top of the car.  It was our first time doing all the tying and knots and things of that sort, so we were pretty happy with ourselves. We even got it loaded back up BEFORE the bugs came out.  Next time we will bring a step stool, though, because it was a stretch for our shortish height.

As we were driving past Gooseberry on our way back, the sun was almost ready to set, and we thought “Why not stop?”  So we did, and there were only ten cars in the lot when we arrived and two when we left.  It was my favorite trip to Gooseberry ever!  It was so peaceful with no one around, and the light was buttery and lovely.  The water was really zipping through there, and we stayed until it was dark, whereupon we had a piece of candy purchased earlier from the candy store and headed back to Duluth.  It was  lot of fun to spend the day together hiking, eating, kayaking and swimming.  Wahoo girls!