North Shore Camping - Day 5

The morning of Friday, June 29th, was the last few hours at our camp at the Trail's End campground.  The site that we stayed at was huge, could have easily fit multiple tents if we needed.  On the lakeside part of the camp, there was a thirty foot cliff down to the lake, though if we walked a little west of the camp we were able to walk a gentle slope to the lake.  This is a campsite we will probably stay at again sometime.

Before we left for our hour drive back to Grand Marais and Lake Superior, I wanted the boys to have a picture taken by the Superior National Forest sign.  They were extremely upset at me.  When standing by the sign, they had to face directly towards the sun in order for the picture to be taken, which was accompanying by grumpy faces and some whining.

Our plan was to take a limited number of stops along the Gunflint Trail, the boys made sure I remember my promise of ice cream at Sven and Ole's when we got back to Grand Marais.  One short stop that we did make was at the Gunflint Lake scenic overlook.  Gunflint Lake is a border lake, at this stop we were as close to Canada as we got during our week long trip.  Looking at the picture below, you can see the 2,689 million year old, white-colored, granitic, Saganaga Tonalite across the lake.  That's Canada.  This rock also outcrops in the Trail's End campground.

Another quick stop that we had to make was on the Laurentian Divide.  All along this high point of land, water flows downhill one of two directions.  Water either flows south to Lake Superior or water flows north to Hudson Bay.

Just before reaching Grand Marais, we stopped at the scenic overlook to get a quick view of the harbor.  From this vantage point, it is easy to see the tombolo, a curved gravel bar that connects the mainland to what was once an island.  It's this structure that helps to form the harbor and it certainly protects the harbor from strong wind and waves from the north.

After eating our ice cream, the boys had to go down to the harbor.....they of course wanted to throw rocks.

When the boys had finally tired of throwing rocks, we took a short hike to the Coast Guard station to take a look at the ship they had out of the water.  From there, we continued walking past the station on our way to the lighthouse, though the boys gave up that challenge after five minutes and began wandering aimlessly (exploring) the old lava flows that make up this island (before it was connected by a gravel bar to the mainland.  What I thought would be a quick walk to the Coast Guard station, turned into a several hour walk.

While the boys explored what they could, I kept looking to the south for a view of the Sawtooth Mountains as they dip approximately 20 degrees toward the lake.  These 'mountains' are made of more weathering and erosion resistant lava flows.  The more easily weathered and eroded flows in between the mountains have long been removed.

What I also found interesting was the number of carvings we found.  These two signatures are 110 years old.  They were the oldest that we could find, though I wouldn't be surprised if there are older ones present.

After a lunch in Grand Marais, we finally got back on Hwy. 61 for our drive south, the next campground was at Tettegouche State Park.  We were able to drive 10 miles before the boys saw the sign for the Cut Face Creek rest stop.  We had to stop so the boys could continue their quest to dam up the creek before it reached the lake.  Of course they threw rocks into the lake as well.

After finally reaching Tettegouche, it was late afternoon and we needed to get the camp set up and dinner cooking.  The boys ate quick because they wanted to take another hike before it got too dark.  I made them stop at a bench in front of Shovel Point (the large cliffs in the background that we would be standing on top of the next day), which only irritated them because I was slowing them down.  What was the rush?

They wanted to go swimming!  Of course that wasn't too bad of an idea, they needed the washing.  They also found a leech attached to a rock in the river, so we got the opportunity to talk all about leeches (what they are, what they do, are they good/bad, how they were and still are used for medicine, etc.).

The next day would be our last full day camping of the trip.  We'd see several waterfalls, one would be the largest waterfall completely within the borders of Minnesota, and we would stand on two very high cliffs (it's about as high as you can stand directly above Lake Superior along the entire North Shore).
To be continued.