A delightful weekend

We had a wonderful extended weekend in Duluth and the weather turned out much better than expected. We got to Duluth around 1:30 on Thursday and headed straight for Grandma's as we were very hungry. It was even warm enough to sit on the deck and we got there right when a ship was coming in.
After lunch we picked up a malt and a pizza for supper and headed out to the cabin.

Thursday evening we went for a walk and found this boat. As Dan says, we rented a boat and this was all we could afford:
This is the scene Friday morning:


On Friday we stopped for breakfast at The Vanilla Bean . Their food is wonderful and I had french toast made from bread pudding which was very, very yummy. After breakfast we went hiking. We had planned on stopping at the Superior Hiking Trail office (which is right across the street from The Vanilla Bean) in order to get a brochure on the several loops that are available on the trail. However, we were done with breakfast at 8:15 and the office didn't open till 9:00. Since we knew we'd be hiking most of the day, we didn't want to wait around. So we decided to just drive aways until we saw a Superior Hiking Trail sign and we'd just go from there. We went about 10 miles north of Two Harbors, saw a sign and parked in the parking lot. The sign said that it was 4 miles to Nestor Grade going one direction and 2.7 miles to Encampment Creek the other direction. We figured that we'd do both and that would be about the right amount of hiking for the day. So we started on the hike to Nestor Grade. We didn't really know what Nestor Grade was but figured it would be an okay destination and that we'd just turn around once we came to it. This is Nestor Grade:

Yep, friends, this was the destination of our first hike. Turns out Nestor Grade is the name of an old railroad line. Not only was our destination not all that we had hoped, but this particular section of the trail was particularly marshy.

After we got back to the parking lot, we rested and ate out lunch. We had picked up sandwiches from Amazing Grace and packed them in a cooler.

An aside about buying our sandwiches--Amazing Grace has great sandwiches and they are typically quite large. When we went to get them on Thursday, there was a new kid working there who apparently hadn't had enough training. I always get a hummus sandwich loaded with veggies and this day was no different. I told him I wanted a black bean hummus sandwich so he sliced the bread and put a razor thin amount of hummus on one half. Then he asked if I wanted any hummus on the other half. Um, yeah. Hummus is the main ingredient of the sandwich!!! Normally I have to tell them not to put so much on as they usually really slather it on. So the kid puts a little hummus on the other half of the bread. Then he looks at me and asks me if that was it. It was actually quite comical. I just wanted to laugh but figured he probably wouldn't appreciate that. So I told him that I would also like some veggies on it. It was just a comedy of errors as he forgot to put my cheese on and when he wrapped Dan's sandwich, he laid the saran wrap right in the tomato juices from where someone had been slicing tomatoes. And when I gave him (and another coworker who had to help him with the register) the coupon for 1/2 off one sandwich, they thought that 1/2 of $4.50 was $2.75.

Back to the hiking--after lunch we were tired but decided to hike the other leg of the trail that we had planned since the previous destination was not what we had planned and it was short in comparison. It may have been shorter but it was much hillier (is that even a word?). Here is Encampment River (it's a close-up, not the full view of the river):
It was a better destination than Nestor Grade but I don't think we'll hike this section again either. Next year we'll do some better planning.

Here are some pics of other things we saw on the trail:

Anyone know what this plant is? We found them in several marshy places.
On Saturday we just hung out at the cabin. This is the scene to which we awoke:
It was a gorgeous morning!! The water was calm and the sky was blue. We thought that we were going to have colder weather and many more clouds. Periodically a breeze would blow and it was really cool to watch it move the water and how the sun would reflect on that part. We had a good day reading, napping and setting our goals for the year. As the day progressed, the weather became a bit more unpredictable. It would be blue skies and then a storm cloud would come in, then blue skies and then another storm cloud. Here are two pics of after one of the storm clouds came through:


This was a really cool scene. After the second storm cloud came through, the skies were still pretty dark but this boat came along and the sun seemed to be shining right on it. And it was such a stark contrast since the boat is mostly white. It was really a neat thing to see. The picture doesn't really do it justice.

Sunday morning we again awoke to sunshine but it was much cooler. We packed up, stopped for breakfast at Chester Creek Cafe and drove home.