North Shore Again

We decided to take a short trip up north for Independence Day. Leaving around 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 3rd, we got to Duluth around 11:00 and immediately took a walk on the Lakewalk. This is a paved pathway along the shore of Lake Superior. We started at Fitger's, which is an old brewery that's been turned into a hotel and shopping center, and headed north, stopping at the rose garden in Leif Erikson Park. This is a lovely garden, dedicated, I suppose, to the principle that it is possible to grow roses even in the frozen northland. It was not at all frozen that day. Down in Minneapolis and St. Paul it was in the nineties, and even here, by cold, cold Lake Superior, it was in the eighties and muggy. We walked north a little farther, in the bright sunshine, then turned and went back to Fitger's.

We got onto Scenic 61 and after a short drive along the lakeshore arrived at our favorite restaurant in the area, Nokomis. There we had a late lunch: Mary Joy had a walleye sandwich and I had a pulled pork sandwich. We both had a very nice chopped salad with, I think, a raspberry vinaigrette, as well as a glass of Catalan white wine.

Then we drove through Two Harbors and eleven miles north, to our hotel, the Grand Superior Lodge, arriving around 3:30. Our room was on the second floor of a log cabin. It was very cute. Three years ago, we had stayed at a bed and breakfast in Panguitch, Utah. The owner was originally from Minnesota, so our German friend Marika had stayed in the Northwoods Room, with a fish pillow, a stuffed loon and other such northwoods fishing cabin decor. Here we had a tongue-in-cheek, high-class version of the real thing. There was a border of pine boughs and cones painted along the ceiling. Above the bed were three stylized pine trees. The ceiling and walls were knotty pine. Everywhere you turned there were moose and loons and black bears (the last with "Welcome" signs). Rustic, however, it was not. Instead of an outhouse, there was a large, modern bathroom. And there was WiFi!

We went into Two Harbors for dinner at Black Woods. Mary Joy liked her chicken potpie, but I've had better chicken mandarin salad: I was expecting oranges in it, but there weren't any, and I haven't made up my mind whether having curry in it was a good or bad idea. We both liked the house beer, Black Woods Ale. We went back to Grand Superior and relaxed, reading in the room. I finished The Social Animal, by David Brooks, and started Peter Ackroyd's Venice: Pure City, while Mary Joy was reading Schiller's Wilhelm Tell in the original German.

The next morning we had breakfast at the lodge restaurant (not bad), then checked out and headed twenty-some miles up the coast to Tettegouche State Park. All the state parks along the North Shore (except Split Rock, which surrounds a lighthouse) have waterfalls, since there is a sharp dropoff from the heights to Lake Superior. Eagle Mountain, the highest point in Minnesota, is along this coast. The highest waterfall, which we visited two years ago, is the High Falls of the Pigeon River, on the Canadian border, a short walk from the new interpretive center off Highway 61. The highest waterfall entirely within the state of Minnesota is the High Falls of the Baptism River, in Tettegouche State Park.

 This requires more effort to get to, being a 1.5 mile (2.4 kilometer) hike, mostly uphill, from the parking lot on 61. We'd done this hike twice before. The first time, many years ago, we made a wrong turn, got off the trail and ended up bushwhacking our way up the bottom of the gorge, while the real trail runs along the northeast (left bank) rim. The trail starts at a parking lot near the highway rest area, passes under the Highway 61 bridge over the Baptism, then goes gradually up, through aspens, birches and pines, with occasional views into the gorge. At three points there are stairs down to the water. The second is at Two-Step Falls, while the third allows you to view the High Falls from below. To start with, we passed these by, and headed straight up another set of stairs that took us to the top of the High Falls, then over the river behind them on a flimsy-feeling wire bridge. There are vantage points on either side of the falls.

The Superior Hiking Trail passes over the bridge, and while we were viewing the falls, a group of hikers (mostly high-school-age boys) came along. They said that they had started from Gooseberry Falls State Park on Saturday, four days before. If that was correct, they had been taking their time, since Gooseberry Falls was only about twenty miles away. Maybe the trail meanders quite a bit compared to the highway.

We headed back, first going down the stairs to the viewpoint below the falls. The bottom of the staircase had apparently been washed out by the extremely heavy rains that had caused floods in the Duluth area a few weeks before, so we had to do a little hillside scrambling. Then, we went on, going down the next set of stairs to Two-Step Falls. By now, we started hearing ominous rumbling noises. Mary Joy was afraid that we would get caught in a thunderstorm, but I assured her that it was only the sound of cars crossing the highway bridge. However, when we were able to see the sky to the southwest, it became clear that I was wrong.

We hurried back to the rest area and asked the rangers there about the weather. Severe storms were coming in from the west. We got into our car and headed back down Highway 61. On the way, we ran into rain, but the darkest clouds and heaviest rains passed by us and moved out over the lake. By the time we got to Gooseberry Falls, the rain had stopped, so we parked and took a look at the Middle Falls.

Going on, we passed through Two Harbors, and picked up the Scenic Highway. As we approached Knife River, we saw ahead of us a State Patrol car block the highway and turn back cars that were heading in the same direction as we were. When we got closer, the patrolman waved us around, so we found ourselves heading back the way we had come. A number of cars were parked along the side of the road. What was this about? What should we do now? I figured that it must be an Independence Day parade. We turned into a driveway and asked a man who was working in his yard. I was right. He said that it was a small kiddy parade and should only last a few minutes. We thanked him and turned back toward Knife River, expecting that we would have to park and wait. But even as we approached the patrol car, it pulled away, letting us through.

We stopped at Russ Kendall's Smokehouse for some smoked fish (local lake trout and Alaska salmon), then went on to Nokomis, where, around four o'clock, we had a late lunch or early dinner. This time, we both had the walleye sandwich. Very good.

In spite of the holiday and a long stretch of road repair south of Duluth, traffic was not heavy. An article in the newspaper had said that a lot of people would be taking two days of vacation, in order to stretch the holiday out into a five-day weekend. The article had also suggested that for some deep psychological reason, the great majority of these people would take Thursday and Friday off, instead of Monday and Tuesday, although the time off would be exactly the same. Certainly, if many people had taken Monday and Tuesday off, we would have run into crowds in the parks and restaurants and on the road. Only Gooseberry Falls was overrun with people, and they could have been at the beginning of their vacation, rather than the end.

By now, it had cooled off into the seventies, but as we made our way south, our car's outside thermometer showed a drastic increase of temperature. It had been 101 degrees (38 degrees Celsius) in Minneapolis and St. Paul--a new record for the date, I think. It was still in the nineties. When we got back, instead of going somewhere to watch fireworks, we stayed indoors, with the air conditioning on.