saturday by the lake

Ever since school started in early September, I've spent pretty much every weekend at home. It's been rare that I've done much more than go grocery shopping. Some of that is an effort to be a little more frugal (yes, we have worries about the economy just like everyone else), but I've mostly just been too busy to do anything else. Yesterday morning, I woke up sometime between 5-6am and immediately went to work on the assigned readings for my business ethics course. By 7:45, however, I decided I couldn't take it any more. I went and woke up the little lady, and by 9am, we were on the road to Lake Superior.

Lake Superior is about three hours from where we live, which I don't consider to be a bad drive (bless my parents for subjecting me to many road trips when I was a kid). I've always enjoyed going up there, even though our visits have typically been very short. You might think that driving three hours+ each way to spend only 2-3 hours in the area is kind of crazy, but sometimes it's nice to do something a little crazy and out of the ordinary. Plus, the landscapes up there are much different than where we live and are very pretty.

We're at the tail end of fall where we live. The further north you go, the earlier fall comes, which meant that we didn't get to see the vibrant fall colors for which we were hoping. Still, there were colors to be seen, and I enjoyed that.

The main road that you drive to get to the north shore of Lake Superior goes right along the shore of the lake once you get to Duluth. There are lots of old mansions and tons of trees. It's a very picturesque part of town.



Unlike southern Minnesota, northern Minnesota has lots of evergreen trees. Their green colors make for a nice contrast against the yellows, oranges and reds of fall.



Our final destination was Gooseberry Falls, which is about 45 minutes north of Duluth. The falls are about a mile from Lake Superior. I've always enjoyed hiking around this area. I'm a sucker for landscapes that have water.



There were still some colors to be seen, but sadly most of the reds and oranges were gone. Many of the trees had lost most of their leaves as well.







The traffic wasn't too bad going up, but we quickly realized when we got to Gooseberry Falls that 98762378276 other people had the same idea we did. Nature is always better when there's no one else around, but I guess you can't win 'em all.









It's hard to imagine just how big Lake Superior is until you get there. Most of us don't think of lakes as being so large that you can't see the other side. Lake Superior is definitely like that, which is nice--it kind of makes you feel like you're by the ocean.





By the time we left, the clouds had rolled in and few people were left near the shore. It would have made for a better stay, but it was windy and a bit cool, and we didn't bring any food or blankets with us anyway, so we didn't stay long.



We've really appreciated mom-and-pop restaurants ever since we ate exclusively at such restaurants when we were in Italy, Greece and Turkey earlier this year. Becca was in the mood for trying something different, so we stopped at a mom-and-pop-looking diner we saw a few miles down the road from the falls. There was a 45-minute wait for a table, but since we didn't have anything else going on, we sat and waited. The food was pretty good, so we're glad we waited. We shared chili cheese fries, and Becca had a bacon burger while I had an open-faced meatloaf sandwich. This diner, Betty's, advertised their many different kinds of pies as their main draw, so we ordered a slice of cherry/berry and a slice of apple/strawberry with ice cream to share. Both flavors were very good, but one slice would have been enough. Driving three hours on a full stomach is never a good idea.

I have a ton of school stuff to do today, but I'm still glad we went. We'll have to remember to go earlier next year so that we can see more colors.