Roadtrek Travels: June 8-9 Lake Superior Loop, Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock

Thursday, June 12, 2014

June 8-9 Lake Superior Loop, Gooseberry Falls, Split Rock

Sunday, June 8 and Monday, June 9

Woke to a sunny day! We started up the North Shore, route 61 along Lake Superior.

First stop Brighton Beach, a rocky but pretty beach. Several people out enjoying the day including a guy playing guitar and singing.

Next stop Two Harbors, site of three iron ore docks – used to be more. Across from the docks is a lighthouse which is still functional, built in 1892 to aid the ore carriers. They were notoriously difficult to handle and over the years many were lost.

The Edna G, a steam tug built in 1896, operated till 1981!

An Indian Sculpture by Peter Toth is in front of their visitor’s center.

This town, as several we have seen lately, has a Curling Club.

The shore is very rocky here and we go through 2 tunnels on the way to Gooseberry Falls State Park. We hike the loop trail which goes by five different falls. Nice trail, lots of folks with kids and dogs enjoying the day. The water here has a yellowish tint due to mineral content as well as tannin. On the way to the Fifth and furtherest falls there are still some chunks of ice/snow in the shade.

This water bug made an interesting pattern in the shallow water along the stream.

There is a statue here to the CCC, whose 3,000 men built much of the infrastructure of this park back in the 1930’s – trails, walls, pavilions, etc. A young couple asks me to take their picture by the statue and he joking says to his girlfriend, "You, me and..." a pause as he looks at the statue and then he says "Harold" - which is EXACTLY what I was about to say! Weird!

We stop at Twin Points Wayside for a picnic lunch and are eyed constantly by a huge raven. I give in and give him a piece of orange – wonder if he’d ever tasted that before!

Next stop is Split Rock Lighthouse which was built after a horrible storm in 1905 wrecked or damaged 29 ships, with 200 lives lost.

We watched a film and then had a brief tour by a personable young guy named Adam. There were 3 keepers at this station and when it was first built, all the materials were hoisted up the cliff face, as there were no roads! The fog signal was actually the primary means of communication, since sometimes the light couldn’t be seen through the fog. The deeper channels in the lake here are towards the other side, so the fog horn helped keep ships “on track”.

Beautiful scenery everywhere!

We stopped at Tettegouche State Park.and got the last campsite! Showers and meatball sandwiches and salad. Ahhhh.

Monday, June 9, 2014

46 degrees this morning1 We decide to take a little side route to a town called Isabelle in search of animals, but only see a few deer and rabbits. Lots of seagulls and geese all along the lake.

In Beaver River there is a huge taconite plant owned by Northshore Mining. Their mascot, Rocky greats visitors. It employs about 600 people and will ship 6 million tons of ore.

Beaver River taconite plant

Rocky

Back to Tettegouche, we walk the Shovel Point trail onto a jutting rocky promontory. Lots of birch trees and we notice again that even as the insides of the tree decay, the bark lasts much longer – it is waterproof, hence its use in canoes, containers and shelters.

We stop by the North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum, but opt not to pay to see the one room with mostly photographs. Outside displays give some history. Fishing was a very big industry in the mid 1800’s but now there are only a few, mostly Scandinavian fishermen….no big commercial companies.

We stop at a Napa Auto Parts in Grand Marais to have the battery checked, since Beth is concerned, but it is fine. Yeah. We stop for a few groceries at an IGA store where several of the workers were Russian exchange students!

Several people have mentioned the Gunflint Trail, a 50+ mile road into the interior as a wonderful thing to do, so….we’re off. Very nice scenery but a little more “civilized” than we expected, especially the first 20 miles. After 20 or so miles we get into some nice countryside and come across this moose.

foam from the waterfalls makes interesting patterns

Greg stopped and he just walked in front of the van and stared at us for a while, then mosied off. We stop at a beaver pond and watch for a while and see that busy beaver several times.

Gunflint Lake is at the end of the trail and has an END OF THE TRAIL café. A few fishing resorts and not much else but we see a Sysco 18-wheeler – have seen their trucks all over and Bryan says they have a Canadian division too, so guess it will continue!

Back in Grand Marais, we try the Dockside restaurant which advertises fresh catch. We shared walleye cheek chowder and whitefish. Also tasted the smoked herring which I was prepared to dislike, but didn’t! Not a lot of options as to restaurants, but this place was hoppin’!