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Thursday, September 28
Trip from Thunder Bay to Grand Marais, MN
We left Thunder Bay around 9:30 AM after stopping at the Safeway across the street from our hotel to get bread and roast beef for sandwiches. The lb. of roast  beef was annoyingly confiscated less than an hour later at the American border as beef apparently can’t cross the border from Canada into the U.S. The Mad Cows strike again.
The trip down to Grand Portage, MN took only about an hour. We stopped at the Grand Portage National Monument, a replica of a former trading post from the 1700s built on the same footprint of the ruins present there. The camp had been a place to pass furs and goods between the officers of the North West Trading Company from Montreal and the men who traded with the Indians west of that area. The portage was a roughly 9 mile stretch of land that avoided some particularly unnegotiable rapids. The resident park ranger was a guy who has been living a natural mountain life for many years, and in fact, his only way to and from his home is by hiking, snow shoeing, or sled (via dog). In the photo above, he is painting pine pitch on the seams of a canoe he has been working on for over two years.
We arrived early afternoon in Grand Marais, where we had reservations to stay the night at the  Aspen Lodge. The hotel was able to accommodate us early, so we settled in, then went to explore the town. The Aspen Lodge was very nice, had a great view of the Lake from the picture window in the room, and was centrally located so that we could walk to town. We finally found the Hugh Bishops book on Lake Superior (don't leave home without it if you're planning on doing the Lake Superior Circle Tour) at a large general store, had some tea, then set  out to find agates at Paradise Beach on a tip-off from one of the locals. We collected a lot of nice-looking rocks, probably none of them agates since we wouldn’t know an agate if we tripped over it. After that, we walked out Artists’ Point to the lighthouse there. It was dusk, it had stopped raining, and I was able to get some nice photos.
We ate dinner at a fun place called the Angry Trout, which specializes mostly in fish, wonderfully prepared, from Superior. George had trout; I had herring (which are nothing like the small, salt-water ocean herring we are used to).
Friday, September 29
Trip from Grand Marais to Duluth
We hung around Grand Marais for a long time the next morning because there is lots to see and do there. For instance, we spent a long time searching for thomsonite and agates at Cutface Beach. We collected a lot of something, but weren’t sure if anything was actually thomsonite. At the Thomsonite Resort up the road, where they sell crafts and jewelry made from thomsonite, we studied the samples and bought a book describing the rocks in the area and how to recognize what you collect. Turns out we  had collected a lot of something called rhyolite, not thomsonite. So, back we went to the beach to find the real thing. George finally spotted something that looked like thomsonite on a hunk of rock —a dinky poor sample, but there is definitely some pink and white banded veneer sitting on the surface of the rock that seems characteristic of thomsonite. We're still not sure if we have any agates. I think the locals send tourists on wild goose chases and keep the good stuff for themselves. I'd do the same.
After we finished rock collecting, we backtracked to Grand Marais and drove up the Gun Flint Trail in search of the Cascades waterfalls. Even though it was [still] raining, we hiked for about an hour around the falls. In spite of the rain, I got some really nice photos of the falls. A good, sturdy tripod is worth lugging around on trips like this one. Then we headed south on 61 out of town  towards our destination of Duluth. There were so many places we would like to have stopped but there was not enough time, and it was raining (and did I mention, COLD?). We made a detour to see Caribou Lake and made several other stops at various overlooks along the way. George wanted to see Split Rock Lighthouse, but when we got there, it was almost 5:30, it cost $8 apiece to just to get onto the grounds, and we had just missed the last tour. We opted to forget it. Our last stop before Duluth was Castle Danger, at a place called the Rustic Inn, to purchase a pie as we'd gotten a tip that this place made really good pies. We bought a strawberry rhubarb pie to take with us. (We were not disappointed.)
 We had hoped to see plenty of vivid fall colors, but unfortunately, the red and orange leaves had mostly all blown away with the rain and wind. There were still a lot of yellow aspens though, with occasional pockets of red and orange. We learned that there are two foliage seasons along the Lake: the reds and oranges, then the yellows. We were experiencing the yellow phase.
We had reservations at a Comfort Inn in Duluth (having earned a free night somewhere along the way), but had no idea where in Duluth it was located. We followed a hunch and found it by staying on the main drag though the city's business center, through the run down section, and into the industrial section. Duluth is a city of contrasts—interesting old (high rent) homes along the Lake, large industrial plants, the usual "vice" area with the bars and pool halls, etc. Our hotel was on the edge of vice and industry, but a free room is a free room. The room itself, if we ignored the view out the window, was actually very nice. After we settled in, we drove back to the city center and had dinner at the Thai Krathong restaurant (the only Thai place in town, I believe). Good food.
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