At the end of the summer, we took a family vacation to Minnesota. On Friday, August 26, we headed out on our adventure to the North Shore of Lake Superior. We had an overnight stay in Cedar Rapids with Cory's parents before arriving in Duluth on Friday afternoon. We decided to drive this time, and not repeat the three-ring-circus of flying with three small children like the last time we went three years ago.
On Saturday, we met Grandma and Grandpa Hedberg, Uncle Chris, Aunt Jill and baby Abby at our hotel in Duluth, Minnesota.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the shores of Lake Superior.
After dinner at a very interesting and eclectic little restaurant, we had ice cream at a popular walk-up ice cream shop that has an awesome view of the lake.
Once we were finished with our ice cream, we headed back to the shoreline where Grandma, Johanna, Julia and I walked down the boardwalk to watch an ore boat come into harbor under the lift bridge. Along the way we saw all kinds of activity on the boardwalk area. Horse drawn carriages and a couple selling flowers off their mini horse, just to name a few.
The girls thought it was pretty neat to watch the ore boat come in under the lift bridge. Their favorite part was when the boat and bridge "talked" to each other.
On Sunday, we walked through some of the shops of downtown Duluth.
We also tried to feed some cheese curds to the seagulls, but we obviously had bad timing, as their normal hangout was empty. Usually it looks something like this:
We also took our traditional family photos on the anchor,
and Grant had some more fun climbing around on the rocks.
That afternoon we took a boat ride around the harbor on the Vista Star.
We saw many harbor sights:
We also saw some beautiful sunrises in Duluth (at least some of us did).
On Monday morning we headed further North up the shore to our Lodge in Castle Danger, Minnesota.
We ate lunch at a little restaurant on the side of the road that we always stop at when we are up there (It has good food and great "fruits of the forest" pie). After eating, we had fun exploring the shoreline around the lodge.
Grant began building a "rock bridge" so we could walk further out into the water. This became his project over the next few days, and he was out there working on it when we were at the lodge and the weather was nice.
Oops! I think someone had a little fall.
We also got settled into the lodge.
Once we were settled, Cory started a campfire on the shore where we roasted hot dogs and s'mores for dinner.
Jill discovered it can be a little tricky to eat a s'more while holding a sleeping baby.
The girls found these bottles of Spotted Cow Beer to be very entertaining, and yes, they were empty!
On Tuesday, we woke up to a beautiful Minnesota morning.
After breakfast, we headed to Gooseberry Falls.
We spent the afternoon at the lodge,
(The onesie that Grant made. Yay!)
and the building of the "rock bridge" continued.
On Wednesday, a thick fog and rain rolled in so we decided to put off our trip to Split Rock Lighthouse until later in the afternoon. Cory and I took this opportunity to get out of the lodge on our own and visit some of the shops along the highway. We had quite the adventure! Let's just say we ran into a rambling Swede, a deer ran into us (yes, literally), and we met a three-legged dog named Mia at a coffee shop.
Once Cory and I got back, we all went to Betty's Pies for a piece of pie, and then we headed to Split Rock Lighthouse. Once we got to the lighthouse, we looked around the museum. Grant was especially impressed by this Lego version of the lighthouse.
After we were done looking around the museum, we headed out to see the lighthouse.
This was the view from the above window.
Once we had walked around the lighthouse, we took the trail down to the shoreline.
The fog had cleared up for a little while, and then rolled back in before we were able to get all the way down to the shore to get pictures with the lighthouse in the background. You can just barely see it back there!
On the way back up, we took the stairs...lots of stairs.
On Thursday morning we said good bye to Grandma, Grandpa, Chris, Jill and Abby and started our drive back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We decided to take a different route and stop in the little town of Red Wing. This little detour added about 3 hours to our trip and made our drive that day a total of 11 hours!! We could have drove all the way home to Missouri in that time. We ended up at Cory's parent's house around 10 P.M. and we were all ready to get out of the car!
We spent Labor Day weekend, and celebrated Cory's birthday, with his family in Iowa. We came home on Sunday, September 4. We had a great trip, but were glad to be home!
