North Shore of Lake Superior, 2021

HI WHO IS READY FOR ANOTHER RANDOM BLOG POST FROM THINGS THAT HAPPENED FOUR MONTHS AGO YEP OKAY HERE WE GO.

(Side note: today I made my dad’s famous liver pate, finished all the holiday candies, and scrubbed down the bathrooms [quite the combo, that]. Oh! And washed all our bedding. Nothing like fresh sheets, amirite? Especially after a long day when your eyes are burning from exhaustion and the last of the sheets are finally (blessedly) done in the dryer and you make the kids’ beds, including layers of stuffed animals and blankets lovingly tucked in, only to realize after: you put the wrong sheet set on each bed, and the anal 8-year-old is totally going to freak out all Monk-style if he sees it, DAMMIT. I had to take a 5-minute deep-breathing break before fixing that situation…).

ANYWAY I AM SUPER TIRED NOW AND TO SEGUE: here is my sweet non-neurotic child, sleeping in his lake house bedroom in all its glory, tangled up in messy bedding, about to have his life ruined because I am going to wake him up about two hours earlier than he would like in order to force him to get dressed and into the car to hit the road to the Minnesota North Shore for the day.

Poor kid. But shake him and his brother awake, we did, and then we hit the road to Duluth and then up the famous North Shore. Our lake house was about an hour from Duluth, but it’s a pretty drive full of shoreline and pines and quirky roadside stops.

Wild rice and lobster and fireworks, the natural combination.

Once we hit Duluth, we switched to Hwy 61 and we were officially on our way.

It’s about a 2-hour drive from Duluth to the tippy-top of the North Shore (right up to the Canada border), so about 3 hours from our lake house. But that’s easily a full days’ drive, to be honest we didn’t make nearly as many stops as we could have. In theory you should plan on two days at least to explore.

We missed out on the many stunning waterfalls, lighthouses, cozy diners and smokehouses and coffee shops, a few huge state parks, one national forest, and never made it anywhere near the Boundary Waters. In short: you could visit Minnesota’s North Shore 10+ times and still have new things to do and explore each and every visit.

The picture below is when we stopped for a “potty stop”, in a very small town (typical for the area). We stopped at a local park and there were only port-o-potties with (QUELLE HORREURS) flies inside, so Pete just could not deal. So we drove to a nearby gas station. But, hey. We stopped at a nondescript, “boring” park and this was the view:

Wow, gross, so ugly.

So we stopped at a gas station across the street from this place, and this is pretty typical of the North Shore – most small towns boast some pretty delicious freshly-smoked local fish.

Anyway. Off we went again, to the next little stop.

Our next stop was the little town of Silver Bay, which had a few beaches right next to each other for us to explore. Fun fact about the Minnesota North Shore! You can find all colors of beaches here! You have your normal sand…

And the pink sands (consisting of rhyolite).

And even a black sand beach.

Truth be told: the black sand was cool to see, but more like “tiny pebbles” than actual sand and honesty not that comfortable on a hot August day. It sure added a cool hue to the water, though.

After checking out the beaches of Silver Bay, we moved on up a bit to Tettegouche State Park. Now: this state park is known for several hiking trails, including a lovely lighthouse area, but what really called out to us was Palisade Head. It’s a cliff area just inside the park (but no cost, score!), once you drive up and park you can walk all over the rocky cliff formations to explore. The views are GORGEOUS. By far, the most breathtaking views we saw that day.

Pete was grumpy and stayed in the car (the pre-teen hormones are real, friends), but Linus eventually found me waaaaay out on the path, then we made our way back and found Scottie also wandering around.

Gorgeous.

Anyway! We got back to the car and I shared my stash of gummies with Peter and he kinda warmed back up to hanging out at the next stop.

Superior National Forest was highly recommended but we kinda were booking it to Grand Marais at that point. I had put in a donut order at a local place that sells out regularly, but they closed at 1pm that day. And we were cutting it close, whoops. Next time, Superior National Forest!

Grand Marais is the cutest little town, y’all. Fully embraces that Scandinavian + Northwoods culture.

WE MADE IT TEN MINUTES BEFORE THE WORLD’S BEST DONUTS CLOSED, Y’ALL.

DONUT SUCCESS!

There are tourist traps that make it solely on Instagram-ability, and then there are tourist traps that live up to the hype. And this one lives up to the hype. This family-operated bakery opened in the 1960s and has served up the best fried/sugared cake donuts I’ve ever had. Better than Muncher’s, you ask? YES. SORRY MUNCHERS I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER AND YOUR CREAM CHEESE DONUTS. But your idyllic sugar-coated cake donut of my youth has been usurped.

They make these things called “skizzles” (??) and they are basically flat squares of donut dough covered in sugar and they are well worth your time, just sayin’.

By this time we were due a late lunch, so we stopped at Voyageur Brewing for some beers and apps.

I’m going to guess the name came from Voyageurs National Park, which isn’t exactly close (much more land-locked in Northern Minnesota), but hey that’s still cool by me. The beers were good and the apps hit the spot. I especially enjoyed the reuben egg rolls, homemade chips with dip, and flatbreads.

After filling our tummies and enjoying the fresh northwoods air, we picked up a coffee before heading back down. And how could we turn down a place named Java Moose…

Got a “campfire” (s’mores style, mocha and marshmallow latte) for the kids and they were happy as could be. Us adults had the local maple latte, also pretty darn good.

To note: we started back down at Grand Marais (womp, womp) because of time, but there was still plenty of North Shore to enjoy northwards, including the Gunflint Trail and Grand Portage. We’ll just have to tackle those another day.

Around the Gooseberry Falls State Park area, the kids needed a restroom stop so we figured a quick pitstop was in order. Little did we know, we’d be hard-pressed to leave. Here’s the short trail to the closest restroom from the entrance…

Here’s the cute little building with the bathrooms…

And here’s the view right next to it:

Horrid, yes I know.

Needless to say, we stayed for awhile and climbed/explored all over that little area of the park.

This area/beach is known for its agates! We didn’t find any worth keeping, but the rocks were cool nonetheless.

We finally dragged ourselves away and made our way back down the coast. So many notable stops along the way, and I didn’t photograph nearly enough of it. Every little town on the coast had its own version of vintage hotels/motels, smoke shops of local fish, coffee shops, Nordic bakeries, and breweries.

Not something someone associates with Minnesota, but there are also small mountainous areas good for skiing in the wintertime (probably autumn and spring as well, ha).

And before you know it, you’re back to Duluth.

Duluth is beautiful, y’all! We actually ended up visiting this small city twice on this trip. A port city, it sports gorgeous lake views, ample beachfront, and being just south of the Sawtooth and Superior mountain ranges means it has a healthy amount of gentle “bumpy” areas itself.

We hit the lake house area in the dark, but I jacked up the exposure on the picture below because it was our favorite find on the way back, a little dive bar about 10 minutes from the lake house that was holding a testicle festival. Moose still talks about it, he just mentioned it yesterday in fact. MEMMMMORIEZZZ.

That’s it, babes! I can’t wait to go back to this area and share more, it’s so beautiful and magical and full of amazing coffee.

Happy holidays too, friends, if I don’t have time to update again tomorrow! Wishing everyone a lovely, comforting time 🙂