So, this past weekend Beefcake and I made the very long trek up to the Gunflint Trail so I could participate in the Ham Run Half Marathon. It was a very adventurous time! This is part one!
We left Friday morning around 1030 or so. It’s a pretty straight shot up to the north shore from the Twin Cities, though driving through Duluth makes me dizzy. We stopped at a really neat rest stop just outside of Duluth, it had an awesome view and a map pointing out everything of note that you could see from on top of the hill. Next, because I realized about twenty minutes into the drive that I had forgotten to bring my knitting, we made an impromptu stop in Duluth at Yarn Harbor, where I bought some very pretty Colinette Jitterbug and some Cascade 150 Heritage, and a needle. Because I have huge brains, I managed to recall the lace pattern for the Sagebrush Shrug (which was my intended project) so I cast on for that with the Cascade.
We stopped in Grand Marais next to get dinner at Sven and Ole’s. We were told to get a cheeseburger pizza, which we did. It was served with pickles and was delicious.
Now, we were staying at a place called Way of the Wilderness, which is basically some bunkhouses WAY WAY up north. So the next hour and a half were spent driving, nearly by ourselves, along the Gunflint Trail up to our bunkhouse. People, this is for real “murderous hillbilly” country. When we got to the office, we saw this:
So, we just followed the directions. Got to the top of the hill and the view right outside our bunkhouse (sorry, “chalet”) was really nice:
We brought in all of our stuff, setting a few things up and taking in our surroundings. The bunkhouse we were in had a second floor, so we went to check it out, and that’s when we saw the biggest spider we’ve ever seen in real life:
Nightmare Fuel
Fortunately for this spider, we just released him outside instead of panicking and smooshing him. Spiders are good, they eat other bugs, but I wasn’t interested in this guy crawling into my mouth for warmth in my sleep.
Saturday, we slept in. The beds were remarkably comfortable and despite the frogs and bugs yelling at each other all night, we both slept really well. We went for a brief walk around the Trail’s End loop and checked out the view from some of the campsites. We then took a leisurely drive back to Grand Marais, and stopped at some scenic overlooks along the way. One of them was not actually a scenic overlook, and we walked for probably 20 minutes before giving up and turning around. I flipped off Canada too.
Not super sure this was actually Canada, but I flipped off every bit of land over a large body of water I could, just to be thorough
The next site we went to, Beefcake scared some ducks with his Mountain Dew and we found a sign for a picnic site that was probably made by wolves to trick humans.
Yeah, right, wolves TOTALLY didn't make this sign. Whatever.
We finally got to Grand Marais, and took a stroll across the break wall by the harbor. It was super windy and cold, but we were just gearing up for the next stop…
…PASTA FEED! They held a spaghetti dinner as part of the race the night before the run, so we went and ate a gross amount of spaghetti. Because I’m a terrible blogger, I did not take a picture of my spaghetti, so you’ll just have to believe me.
We drove back to Way of the Wilderness and spent the rest of the night playing Pandemic which was awesome (we bought it just for this trip) and listening to the Nerdist podcast. Up next: The race and the rest of the stuff!