Jessie: It's always nice to see waterfalls with water, and that's exactly what we saw about 20 times today. Driving coastal highway 61 from Duluth to Grand Marais, MN, we started with Gooseberry Falls State Park, a name that reminded me of what dad calls goose bumps. He'll randomly say: "Look at your goose pimples!" Goose pimples? Who calls them goose pimples? That's like calling them goose acne. With these thought in mind we started the easy hike at 8 in the morning - I know, it never ends. The falls were pretty amazing, and big. And it was nice being one of the only people there. The same thing goes for all of the other falls we saw - considering we went to more parks today than any other - which included Split Rock Lighthouse SP, Tettegouche SP, Cascade River SP, Temperance River SP, and Judge CR Magney SP.
Split Rock Lighthouse had a small island a little ways off the coast, and I was surprised when dad said we could walk to it, considering an island means that there's water all the way around it. It turns out that when the tide is low there's a path of rocks that comes from the mainland and goes out to the island. Unfortunately we weren't able to make it to the island, not because of the water but because of a sign that said we weren't supposed to. So instead of hiking to the island we walked along the pebbled beach. As we walked dad said the best sentence ever: "I don't think we're going to do the Eagle Mountain hike." The Eagle Mountain hike or, as Alli and I liked to call it, the Evil Mountain hike, was a seven mile hike (round trip) up a mountain.
As I said earlier waterfalls were the main attraction today but Tettegouche SP had an area called the Palisades which was an expanse of shoreline with shear cliffs that were several hundreds of feet high. Dad wanted a photo of him sitting with his feet over the edge. Beautiful scene except for the comment "If I fall, here are the car keys." Yeah, that inspires confidence. Thanks Dad.
After skipping the hike of doom we happily went to Dairy Queen, where I boxed a wooden moose and Alli imitated a bear. We went back to our hotel room, the awesomest - yeah I'm pretty sure I made that up - room ever. We had a balcony that looked out over the lake, where the occasional pirate ship passed by, and a shower with multiple shower heads. Our hotel was right on the beach so Dad and I walked the beach, Dad skipping rocks as I searched for rocks. I went into the water willingly and came out a second later involuntarily. That water was so cold it almost hurt. But after a nice talk with a friendly stranger we called it quits - don't get me wrong it wasn't because of the stranger - and went in for the night, having only two more days of vacation left.
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