Wednesday, September 28
Another blue sky day. It was chilly, but I will take cool over rain any day. We ate breakfast, packed up the car and checked out of the apartment around 9 am. Today we were driving back to Duluth and hoping to hit some of the places on my "master itinerary" that we had not visited two days ago.
I am kicking myself for not taking better notes on this day. I am trying to jog my memory by looking at a bunch of photos but I am not going to promise that I will remember all of the names and details of what we saw.
Our first stop after leaving Grand Marais was at the trail for Cascade Falls. I hadn't included this on my original itinerary, but my daughter-in-law said it was one of their favorites from their trip earlier in the summer.
There was a handy pullout with parking for several cars right next to the bridge over Cascade River. We followed the advice on the sign and walked across the bridge and began the trail on the east side of the river.
It was a nice hike. Sometimes on a dirt path, other times on a boardwalk or over foot bridges. Cascade River was an appropriate name because the water literally cascades downhill towards Lake Superior forming several waterfalls as it drops in elevation. Here is what I found on the website gowaterfalling.com:
The Cascade River is aptly named. There are a large number of drops of varying sizes on its 17 mile course. It drops 900 feet in its final 3 miles, and there are 4 significant drops in the final quarter mile, all located in Cascade River State Park. In addition to the waterfalls, the narrow, twisted rocky gorge carved out by the river is fascinating.
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| Looking up the river from this vantage point you can see the cascading falls. |
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| There were small pops of color, but nothing spectacular. |
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| The view of Lake Superior from the trail. |
I had been following the Minnesota Fall Foliage reports and knew the colors were running much later this year. This is what the report looked like for the last week of September.
But I also knew that the North Shore experiences two waves of fall color. The first trees to change are the maples inland. A couple of weeks later, the birch trees along the shoreline do their thing.
Originally I thought it would be fun to ride the gondola at the ski resort near Lutsen . I have seen incredible photos with a rainbow of tree colors on the mountain. Sort of like this one taken on the same day several years ago:
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| Bright reds of the maple ridge in Lutsen (from the Summit Express Gondola). September 28, 2015 Photo from https://northshoreexplorermn.com/ |
But the trees along Highway 61 were showing almost no signs of color. I could not imagine there would be anything different going inland just a few miles so I made the decision to skip the gondola ride. BIG MISTAKE. More on this later...
Next stop...Cross River Falls...quick and easy. The falls go right under the bridge on Highway 61 over the Cross River.
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| Cross River Falls |
Getting to our next stop required turning off of Highway 61 and going north a few miles on Highway 1. We missed the trailhead at first and had to backtrack a bit, but then it was less than a half mile walk through the woods to get to Illgen Falls. The 40-foot falls are part of Tettagouche State Park, but not accessible from the park's trail system.
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| Illgen Falls |
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| Looking downstream from the falls. It is possible to get down to the base of the falls, but it wouldn't be easy. |
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| An interesting tree on the trail. |
When my oldest son looked at my itinerary, he suggested driving even further up Highway 1 to Finland where he said the views were amazing. The high elevation of that area would provide a panoramic view of the beautiful fall trees. Once again I assumed this would be a waste of time since there would be no color. Big mistake AGAIN.
Instead we went back to Highway 61 and drove just a short distance where we turned at the sign for the Tettagouche State Park Visitor Center. I couldn't believe the number of cars in the large parking lot!! Obviously autumn is prime season on the North Shore. We have relaxed a bit in our social distancing, but still I didn't feel the need to go into the packed visitor center. There were picnic tables outside where we enjoyed our lunch. No photos other than this little chipmunk who hung out with us while we ate.
A couple of miles further on Highway 61 brought us to the Palisade Head Road. The steep and very windy road ended at a small parking lot at the top of the hill. Mostly full, we were able to squeeze into one open space.
I get a little sick to my stomach just watching climbers on TV so when I saw the sheer cliff I kept my distance from the edge (as in I barely left the parking lot.) From there I did have a good view looking across to Shovel Point.
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| Shovel Point |
Bob eventually convinced me that I could move a little further out on the cliff and still be safe. There was a low rock wall at the edge that gave me a small sense of security and from my new spot I could see the sheer cliff of Palisade head! How incredible!! We watched climbers getting ready to descend down the face of the cliff. This was the same place where Bob took a rock climbing class that began his passion of climbing many years ago.
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| Palisade Head, so much higher than it appears in this photo! |
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| Photo taken by the troll under the bridge (Bob) 😄 |
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| Looking downstream as the river flows into Lake Superior |
And for our last waterfall of the day...Gooseberry Falls. Gooseberry wins the popularity contest when it comes to North Shore waterfalls. The trail to the falls is paved and not very long which makes it accessible to most. There were actually quite a few people at the falls but I tried to be creative in my photographs to make it look as if we were alone!
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| A rare photo of me. 😉 |
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| I think the tree roots look sorta like snakes! |
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| Playing around with the live photo setting on my iPhone. |
An overload of waterfalls for one day, huh? Gooseberry was the last one (at least for the day) and time for us to get to our hotel in Duluth.
As we were approaching Two Harbors, I looked up the Duluth ship schedule on my phone to see if any large ships would be arriving or leaving the harbor while we were there. It was close to 3:00 at the time and I saw that a large ship was due to come in at Two Harbors soon. I wasn't sure how accurate the schedule was so we pulled into the small visitor center as we got into town. The nicest lady was working and gave me a map to show where we should go for the best view of ships coming in. Turns out she was directing us to the breakwater where we had been on Monday.
Another couple also stopped in and had just come from the north. They had ridden the gondola up to the ski resort at Lutsen and were RAVING about the incredible fall colors they had seen. Yes...I was jealous and mad at myself at the same time because we didn't take time to go up in the gondola. Also after getting home I started seeing lots of beautiful photos on social media from Finland (where our son suggested we go). Double fail.
We drove down to the harbor and walked out to the lighthouse on the breakwater.
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| Two Harbors Lighthouse |
There was no sign of any ships coming in, but a large ship was just pulling out from the ore dock. We got excited thinking it would sail right by us as it left, but after pulling away from the first dock it backed in next to the other dock.
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| The John C. Munson |
On to Duluth. It was after 5 pm when we checked into our hotel, The Lift Bridge Lodge. The hotel was a bit of a splurge for us but you can't beat the location…right at the end of Canal Park by the lift bridge and other points of interest.
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| Photo credit: visitduluth.com |
There are quite a few restaurants in Canal Park (near our hotel) but after seeing an ad for Red Lobster's "endless shrimp" we decided it sounded pretty good. When we arrived, the hostess said it would be about 15 to 20 minutes to get a table so we waited. A good hour later, we finally were seated. The issue seemed to be that the kitchen was understaffed but once we got to our table our orders came fairly quickly. The shrimp choices were yummy. When we declared that we were stuffed, the waitress suggested ordering more to take with us!
The health app on my iPhone said we walked 4 miles during the day which is about 4 miles more than I normally walk. 😆 Those beds in the hotel looked pretty good!
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