The first stop of the day was a quick one, we stopped briefly at the overlook of Split Rock Lighthouse. Construction in the area is finally finished, they've been working on Hwy 61 here for the past few summers. Basically, they carved a new road bypass out of the bedrock, so now that overlook is not directly next to the highway its much safer.
After driving about an hour north, we made a brief stop at Cascade River State Park (approximately 10 miles south of Grand Marais) to get the boys a chance to stretch their legs and see another waterfall. Kieran and I had camped here two summers ago, but it was completely new to Luke. On the way to the series of waterfalls here, we stopped to hug a tree (the boys tend to do that). Actually, I've got a picture of Kieran hugging this same tree when he was four years old, it's a big, old white pine.
After about a 1/2 mile hike uphill (including 74 steps, counted by Kieran), we came to the Cascades. Still flowing fairly well from the prior week's rainfall, the Cascades are a series of waterfalls as the river it attempting to reach the level of Lake Superior. As are many locations on the North Shore, it's located along the Superior Hiking Trail and is popular stop, we passed numerous people.
About halfway from Cascade River State Park and Grand Marais, we made a stop at a roadcut were we tend to stop. It's at Good Thunder Bay (http://earthscienceguy.posterous.com/minnesota-geology-monday-good-thunder-bay). The entire North Shore is made of numerous lava flows of the 1,100 million year old Mid-Continent Rift System. In between lava flows, erosional processes broke the lava flows down and formed sedimentary rocks, like sandstones. This location shows one of the most accessible interflow sedimentary structures on the North Shore, the red rock underneath is a sedimentary sandstone, while the black rock on top is basalt. The basalt is younger than the sandstone, because it flowed as lava onto the top of the sandstone. A great gigapan of the site is found at (if you've never seen a giga pan, check it out): http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/86878.
They boys like the previous stop because they know that they are close to the rest area at Cut Face Creek. It's a great rest stop, located right on Lake Superior where the boys get to, throw some more rocks.
Cut Face Creek flows into the lake at this stop and Kieran has made it a priority for the last four summers to dam this creek up. He's had Luke's assistance for the last two summers, basically, they spend an hour or more placing as many large rocks in the way of the creek. They have not been successful yet. It's another stop where both of the boys bring a large n
umber of basalt, rhyolite and sandstone rocks home with them.
After stopping for a pizza lunch at Sven & Ole's (http://www.svenandoles.com/) in Grand Marias and also checking e-mails, twitter, the internet and sending a few texts (once leaving the city, this wouldn't be possible), we made the turn onto Cook County Highway 12, the Gunflint Trail. Our destination was the Trail's End campground, 57 miles away.
About ten miles before the end of the trail, we made a stop at the Magnetic Rock trailhead. The boys did not believe me that there are rocks that magnets are attracted to, Magnetic Rock is one of those rocks. Actually, most of the rocks along the trail will attract magnets. Magnetic Rock is a large piece of the Gunflint Iron Formation that has been tipped on end as a result of late Wisconsin glaciation ( http://earthscienceguy.posterous.com/minnesota-geology-monday-magnetic-rock).
A forest fire in 2007 removed most of the vegetation in the area and you see lots of evidence of burnt trees (some still standing), but the area is growing back quickly. Kieran and Luke got good at looking for 'blue tape', knowing that if they found it, we were on the right trail. The trail to Magnetic Rock is about 1 1/4 miles to the rock, mostly uphill. On some areas you are hiking on exposed Gunflint Iron Formation and in others you are surrounded with shrubs and saplings. There are lots of random boulders/rocks and tree roots to avoid while hiking. This was a hard hike for Luke's little legs, but he did great.
Kieran's first task upon reaching Magnetic Rock was to see if it's actually Magnetic. He is pointing to a yellow magnet brought along just for this occasion. Kieran tried over and over and finally realized that there are distinct areas in the rock that are magnetic, these areas are comprised primarily of the mineral magnetite.
We spent about thirty minutes at Magnetic Rock, Luke spent most of the time sitting down eating snacks and drinking some of the juice boxes/water that I brought along.
Kieran tired of the resting quickly and decided he needed to climb some rocks. He really wanted to try to climb Magnetic Rock, but I convinced him to climb some of the smaller pieces that had weathered off of the larger rock. When looking at the piece he was climbing on, Kieran even said that it's a piece of the larger rock and he pointed out where it came from on Magnetic Rock. He's beginning to 'get it'.
What's nice about this hike, besides the fact that we never saw another person and were probably surrounded by numerous bears and wolves, was the amount of wild blueberries, raspberries and strawberries found along the trail. Actually, the number of raspberries and strawberries was lower than years before (my assumption is the increasing height of the vegetation is a detriment to them), but the blueberries were common on exposed areas of the iron formation. The pictures below try to show the elevation change you make on the trail, they are taken from a ridge and far in the background is the Gunflint Trail (County Road 12) near the trailhead.
On the hike back, we took many more rest stops than we did on the hike in, it was a difficult hike for the boys (especially Luke). It was hard for me carrying all of the snacks and juice/water. We even hauled in a magnet, compass (to see the rock's effect on it) and a first aid kit (you never know).
When we made it back to the car, we drove the last 10 miles to our campsite so we could set up camp and cook dinner. We went to bed early that night.....we were tired.
The next day we met up with a group of Minnesota science teachers for about six hours for a couple of more hikes, but that's for later.
To be continued....
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