Split Rock Lighthouse State Park...

While camping at Gooseberry in late June, we spent a day at Split Rock Lighthouse State Park.  The historical site (the lighthouse itself) was closed due to COVID, but the park was open.  We had been to the park, but had never down the hiking club trail or geocache...

The first stop had to be to get a glimpse of the lighthouse...

Then it was time to hike...the trail was a little over six miles...

And we got some good overlooks we had never seen before...

Including this fireplace (in the middle of nowhere) that was built in the early 1900's before the the housing project was abandoned...

Almost two miles of the hike was on the paved Gitchi Gummi State Trail...boring walk, but easy...

If you've ever seen the location where the Split Rock River enters the lake, that's where we left the paved trail...

And we got a chance to read up on the history of the area...

The second half of the trail was quite a bit different, pretty wet in some areas...

But we found the password...

And took a side trail off to an old mine site of 3M's...early on in the history of 3M, the company mined several areas on the north shore for corundum (a really hard mineral), it turned out that the mineral that they were actually mining was plagioclase feldspar, a hard mineral, but not as hard as corundum...whoops...

It gave us another good look...and rest area...

At the mine site...

5 miles in, we found stairs...lots of stairs...and this picture was taken after walking up the said stairs...

Halfway up...they needed a break...I said I was never going to walk those stairs again...

Eventually, we got back to the starting point and the lake itself...

And oh yes...it was chilly, but awesome too...

After lunch, it was time to find the geocache...

And back down the same trail we went...

Lukie and Lex found the waypoints pretty easily...

But we came back to the stairs...those evil stairs that just don't end...they're nice going down, but when you go down stairs, you have to come back up them...

And we finally found the geocache...(and had to go up those stairs again to get back)...

Back to the starting point, it was time for a few quick pictures with the lighthouse...

And then time to head back to Gooseberry, but we had to get the usual picture with the passport stamp and state park sign first (not the best picture...traffic was coming)...

One more post is coming to wrap up that camping trip...