Saturday evening, October 3rd, after 5:30 mass, we drove to Duluth and spent the night at the Country Inn and Suites Duluth South (not bad). The next morning we drove up Highway 61, along Lake Superior. We stopped along the way at the rest area at Tettegouche State Park and took a short walk above the shore, with good views of Palisade Head and Shovel Point. We had lunch (not great) at the Bluefin Grille in Tofte, then continued to Grand Marais, where we checked into the Best Western Superior Inn (nice--we have a balcony overlooking the lake). We drove on through the autumn afternoon: bright sunshine, blue sky, bluer lake, yellow and orange foliage, hills, islands, water. Very pleasant.
By Mount Josephine we pulled off the road to photograph some particularly spectacular scenery. There we talked with a Canadian woman who had driven her elderly Mercedes convertible down from Thunder Bay, thirty miles across the border. Mary Joy asked what Thunder Bay was like. They are fixing up the area by the lake, but otherwise it’s apparently not very interesting. If we’d had our passports with us, we’d have gone to see for ourselves, but instead we had to settle for seeing Canada from Grand Portage State Park, across the Pigeon River (which is the international boundary at this point).
The park’s new visitors’ center has been open for just a week, but we were there for one purpose: to walk the half mile to the High Falls of the Pigeon River, the highest waterfall in Minnesota (though we have to share it with Ontario, since the international border runs right through the middle of it). As to how high it is, they apparently haven’t yet decided whether it’s 130 feet high or only 100. Whichever, it’s impressive.
Though the sun was getting low, we decided to go to Judge C.R. Magney State Park, 26 miles back down Highway 61, and take the walk to Devil’s Kettle Falls. This was about a half-hour walk, mostly uphill, but with a precipitous 120-
130-step staircase down to the Upper Falls near the end. Since the Upper Falls are below Devil’s Kettle, we climbed another 700 feet and there it was: a bizarre double waterfall. The right half (as you view it from downstream) was normal, but the left half was a large pothole into which half of the Brule River disappears, no one knows where.
We managed to get back to our car before dark, and then drove a very short distance (just across the bridge over the Brule River) to Naniboujou Lodge. This was a private club for the rich and famous of the 1920s (founding members included Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Ring
Lardner). It went bankrupt during the Great Depression and is now a hotel and restaurant. The restaurant is in the great hall of the lodge, flamboyantly, wonderfully decorated with Cree Indian motifs in red, blue and green. At one end is the largest fireplace in Minnesota, built of 100 tons of rock. The meal was very good, too. We both had Lake Superior herring on wild rice pilaf. One note of interest: the restaurant doesn’t serve alcoholic beverages, so we had sparkling lingonberry-apple juice.
We drove back the fourteen miles to our hotel in Grand Marais and eventually went to bed.
A digression: place names often sound better in French, such as:
Grand Marais = Big Swamp
Eau Claire = Clearwater
Prairie du Chien = Dog Prairie.
Monday morning (October 4, 2010) we had a buffet breakfast (nicer than the one in Duluth) at
our
hotel, then decided to make a short run up the Gunflint Trail. Not far out of town is the Pincushion Mountain overlook, with a spectacular view over Grand Marais and Lake Superior. The Gunflint Trail is pleasant, lined with birches, pines and aspens, but not exciting, at least not in its earlier stages. We didn’t have time to go very far, so we soon turned around and went back to Grand Marais, where we picked up 61 and headed southwest (i.e., Duluthwards, rather than Canadawards) ten miles to Cascade River State Park.
Cascade River is a river that has many cascades (surprise!). As you will by now have realized,
the North Shore is a good place for waterfall lovers. All of the state parks there have them—on this trip we didn’t even get to the highest fall entirely within Minnesota, the 70-foot High Falls of the Baptism River in Tettegouche State Park (we’ve seen that one a couple of times before). We saw the Cascades and Cascade Falls, then took the lengthy (four or five miles round trip) hike up to the top (630 feet) of Lookout Mountain. An impressive view of the lake and thousands of yellow and orange trees.
Next was lunch at the Angry Trout in Grand Marais. Mary Joy had a fish chowder and I had a large salad, both very good. The bathroom facility there is unusual, one room accessed from the courtyard outside the restaurant’s front door. It plays the “outhouse” for jokes, with a large half moon on the door. The inside has been colorfully tiled, by a local artist.
We then headed toward home, stopping again at Tettegouche, but this time going to the top of Palisade Head, with views to Shovel Point in one direction, and to the taconite iron ore plant at Silver Bay in the other direction. No waterfalls here.
But our next stop was at the most photographed waterfall in Minnesota: Gooseberry Falls, just off the highway in Gooseberry State Park.
We confirmed our dinner reservation by cell phone from the parking lot. We were going to dine at Nokomis Restaurant, near the beginning of the North Shore Scenic Drive, not far from Duluth. First, we stopped at Russ Kendall’s smoked fish shop in Knife River, where we picked up some smoked salmon and trout for ourselves and for Mary Joy’s father.
Nokomis is a very good restaurant with picture windows overlooking the lake. The dishes we had were very imaginative. Mary Joy had walleye wrapped in prosciutto, with olives. I had lake trout with purple sticky rice.
After an uneventful night drive through Duluth and down I-35, we got home around 10 p.m.
By Mount Josephine we pulled off the road to photograph some particularly spectacular scenery. There we talked with a Canadian woman who had driven her elderly Mercedes convertible down from Thunder Bay, thirty miles across the border. Mary Joy asked what Thunder Bay was like. They are fixing up the area by the lake, but otherwise it’s apparently not very interesting. If we’d had our passports with us, we’d have gone to see for ourselves, but instead we had to settle for seeing Canada from Grand Portage State Park, across the Pigeon River (which is the international boundary at this point).
The park’s new visitors’ center has been open for just a week, but we were there for one purpose: to walk the half mile to the High Falls of the Pigeon River, the highest waterfall in Minnesota (though we have to share it with Ontario, since the international border runs right through the middle of it). As to how high it is, they apparently haven’t yet decided whether it’s 130 feet high or only 100. Whichever, it’s impressive.
Though the sun was getting low, we decided to go to Judge C.R. Magney State Park, 26 miles back down Highway 61, and take the walk to Devil’s Kettle Falls. This was about a half-hour walk, mostly uphill, but with a precipitous 120-
130-step staircase down to the Upper Falls near the end. Since the Upper Falls are below Devil’s Kettle, we climbed another 700 feet and there it was: a bizarre double waterfall. The right half (as you view it from downstream) was normal, but the left half was a large pothole into which half of the Brule River disappears, no one knows where.We managed to get back to our car before dark, and then drove a very short distance (just across the bridge over the Brule River) to Naniboujou Lodge. This was a private club for the rich and famous of the 1920s (founding members included Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Ring
Lardner). It went bankrupt during the Great Depression and is now a hotel and restaurant. The restaurant is in the great hall of the lodge, flamboyantly, wonderfully decorated with Cree Indian motifs in red, blue and green. At one end is the largest fireplace in Minnesota, built of 100 tons of rock. The meal was very good, too. We both had Lake Superior herring on wild rice pilaf. One note of interest: the restaurant doesn’t serve alcoholic beverages, so we had sparkling lingonberry-apple juice.We drove back the fourteen miles to our hotel in Grand Marais and eventually went to bed.
A digression: place names often sound better in French, such as:
Grand Marais = Big Swamp
Eau Claire = Clearwater
Prairie du Chien = Dog Prairie.
Monday morning (October 4, 2010) we had a buffet breakfast (nicer than the one in Duluth) at
ourhotel, then decided to make a short run up the Gunflint Trail. Not far out of town is the Pincushion Mountain overlook, with a spectacular view over Grand Marais and Lake Superior. The Gunflint Trail is pleasant, lined with birches, pines and aspens, but not exciting, at least not in its earlier stages. We didn’t have time to go very far, so we soon turned around and went back to Grand Marais, where we picked up 61 and headed southwest (i.e., Duluthwards, rather than Canadawards) ten miles to Cascade River State Park.
Cascade River is a river that has many cascades (surprise!). As you will by now have realized,
the North Shore is a good place for waterfall lovers. All of the state parks there have them—on this trip we didn’t even get to the highest fall entirely within Minnesota, the 70-foot High Falls of the Baptism River in Tettegouche State Park (we’ve seen that one a couple of times before). We saw the Cascades and Cascade Falls, then took the lengthy (four or five miles round trip) hike up to the top (630 feet) of Lookout Mountain. An impressive view of the lake and thousands of yellow and orange trees.Next was lunch at the Angry Trout in Grand Marais. Mary Joy had a fish chowder and I had a large salad, both very good. The bathroom facility there is unusual, one room accessed from the courtyard outside the restaurant’s front door. It plays the “outhouse” for jokes, with a large half moon on the door. The inside has been colorfully tiled, by a local artist.
We then headed toward home, stopping again at Tettegouche, but this time going to the top of Palisade Head, with views to Shovel Point in one direction, and to the taconite iron ore plant at Silver Bay in the other direction. No waterfalls here.
But our next stop was at the most photographed waterfall in Minnesota: Gooseberry Falls, just off the highway in Gooseberry State Park.
We confirmed our dinner reservation by cell phone from the parking lot. We were going to dine at Nokomis Restaurant, near the beginning of the North Shore Scenic Drive, not far from Duluth. First, we stopped at Russ Kendall’s smoked fish shop in Knife River, where we picked up some smoked salmon and trout for ourselves and for Mary Joy’s father.
Nokomis is a very good restaurant with picture windows overlooking the lake. The dishes we had were very imaginative. Mary Joy had walleye wrapped in prosciutto, with olives. I had lake trout with purple sticky rice.
After an uneventful night drive through Duluth and down I-35, we got home around 10 p.m.
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