Day 3, Lake Superior Circle Tour

I left all the shades up in the hopes that the light would wake me up. Sure enough, I woke up to a gorgeous pink sky. Made the mistake of going to the bathroom—pink sky was gone by the time I came back out. Got some pictures of the sunrise. The weather on the lake side of the condo was fine, but the weather on the other side was deteriorating rapidly—big clouds moving in.

We packed up, checked out, and went to the Coho Cafe for breakfast. Then we drove up the Caribou Trail to find some maple trees all decked out for fall. Some people we had talked to at Gooseberry Falls yesterday had advised us that the trees were great up there. They were right. Too bad it wasn't sunny, photos would have turned out better.

Then we were off to Cascade River State Park to see the falls. If they're this great in the fall, they must be spectacular in the spring.

On to Grand Marais, where we managed to do a little shopping dashing between the raindrops. Some very interesting galleries in that town. If the weather had been better, we might have wandered more. I'd love to bring home one of the cute birds that folks sculpt from big lake rocks and metal, but there wouldn't be room in the trunk!

Off to The Angry Trout for lunch. Restaurant advertises that the fish on your plate was swimming in Lake Superior just hours ago. Very good fish. Also great homemade potato chips and coleslaw. What I loved about the place (besides the food) was that everything had been designed by local artists—the plates, the chairs, the salt & pepper shakers, etc. When we stopped in the restroom on the way out, there were tile murals of fish on the walls and a turtle in the flooring.

Then off to Grand Portage National Monument. Way too cold and exceedingly windy, so we didn't do any trails. The visitor center is a very nicely designed new building. I wished I could have helped myself to some of the slate just lying around!

Crossed into Ontario, Canada. Rather surly border guard who didn't want to have a conversation, just wanted to see our passports and wanted to know if we had any guns, liquor, cigarettes, can't remember what else he was interested in. Wanted to know why we were coming to Canada. I wanted to reply that we were beginning to wonder about that given the welcome we were receiving, but I bit my tongue. Many of these security folks take themselves way too seriously.

Just before Thunder Bay we spotted a bunch of horses in a field wearing blankies. Not just ordinary horse blankets—these were all different and quite colorful.

Arrived at Thunder Bay where we're staying for the night. When I announced we were now on Eastern time, Heidi's response was, “Great, now we can eat dinner earlier tonight!” By the time we got all the junk into the rooms, we decided we were too tired to go out for dinner and that we would dine on all the leftovers we had from the dinner at Bluefin Bay last night. We couldn't even finish all of that, we had such a big lunch.

Well, no lake outside the windows tonight and no fireplace, so we're reduced to blogging, e-mailing, etc.