Gunflint!

After a failed attempt to camp in our backyard, followed shortly thereafter by an awesome one-night camping trip at Afton State Park, we were ready for our big four-day/three-night camping trip up on the Gunflint Trail. (We went for the fourth of July weekend, which I think sets a record for my most belated blog post ever. I blame Qwest, and now feel grudgingly thankful to be back on Comcast as our ISP again.)

The drive "up north" was surprisingly easy. Rose has gotten to be a great car companion - especially when she has some popcorn to snack on :)

We stopped for lunch at a cute little pizza place somewhere along the North Shore. Rose was excited to have a "happy hour" drink (i.e., a soda).

Then we stopped for a short hike at a cute non-state park area that I can't for the life of me remember the name of! But it was a great little hike that we all enjoyed.

Then we continued on to the Gunflint Trail! It was a gorgeous drive.

Gotta love photos taken through the front windshield!

Wildflowers!

 Finally we made it to the "resort" where we would be camping. We picked this place because we wanted an "out" (i.e., to have a lodge easily accessible) in case it turned out that Rose hated camping. But we discovered that she is a natural outdoors girl and we needn't have worried because she LOVED it!

Our campsite. Ginormous RVs were just to the left and to the right of us.

It's too long of a story to type out, but remind me in person some time to tell you about the bears that visited us...

The tree on the left is where the bears all climbed up one night. Terrifying close to our tent!!!

This is where Mike and I were sitting when the bears showed up. Eeek!

Since our site was right on the water, Rose spent a lot of time swimming...

She was standing on a rock, but I love how it looks like she's walking on water.

... And a lot of time ordering me not to take her picture. :)

Our swimsuits match!

We went out in the boat several times. It was a HUGE lake - like, overwhelmingly so!  Mike and I both realized that we feel more comfortable on smaller bodies of water. 

Rose was grumpy that day.

And not grumpy that day.

One day we ventured back to Grand Marais to explore. I loved this little town!

The donuts really were amazing.

And I highly recommend the Angry Trout Cafe.

  I fell in love with these wildflowers. Anyone know what they are?

And then it was time for one last campfire and one last sunset before we would be headed home.

 It was a great vacation! We had a lot of fun, and learned a lot about our camping preferences and about how we travel as a family. I'm definitely looking forward to next summer's adventures together!

Our first family camping trip

We did a one-night stay at Afton State Park back in June, in preparation for our five nights on the Gunflint trail (blog post still forthcoming...). It was so much fun! We definitely discovered that Rose loves camping, and Mike and I loved sharing the experience with her.

Rose insisted on wearing matching shirts with Daddy.

And we're off!

Only about one (very hilly) mile to go.

We had to stop to check out every puddle along the way.

Made it!

 

I had fun playing with my camera settings.

Mike humored me.

We survived the night!

I'm looking forward to more camping adventures next summer!

Rose-isms

I love some of Rose's incorrect pronunciations! I still laugh when I think of the "do-si-do" (grocery store) and "muff-mahns" (muffins). She says both of those correctly now, so I'm savoring these while they last:

"e-cuzzies"
examples:  They love e-cuzzies so they got married and had a baby.
(each other)

"boo-full-is"
examples: She's a boo-full-is princess.
(beautiful)

my camera is working again! (day trip to Mankato)

Remember back in May when I went on that photography trip with my friend Mary? Well, ever since that time I've had a few weird specks that have been showing up in all my photos. (Hence not posting my 4th of July camping pictures yet.) After much internet research, I determined that I must have gotten dirt on my sensor. Wah-waaaaahhh.  And after several attempts to clean it myself, I determined that there are some things (like dealing with delicate parts that can literally cost several hundred dollars to replace) that are just better left to the professionals. So I finally bit the bullet and brought my camera in for cleaning. Fifty dollars later, no more weird specks on my photos - hooray!!

I had my first opportunity to try out my new and improved camera yesterday, when we decided to take a family trip down to Mankato for the day (inspired by this article in the local paper yesterday). 

We started off bright and early around 8am, eager to put some of the 90-ish miles behind us. Our first stop was to check out "Minnesota's Largest Candy Store," because really what else would you do with a 3-year-old at 8:30am?

 Totally overwhelming. I could feel my insulin kicking in already, just walking into the store!

 Rose did an admirable job deciding what her "one special treat" would be. Mike, on the other hand, was more like a "kid in a candy shop" than our actual kid - he came out with two puzzles, three types of taffy, two kinds of licorice, and a caramel apple!

 She really wanted "a person I can eat," but settled for a chocolate turkey instead.  And wouldn't you know that our little champagne-tastes child didn't want the $2 foil-wrapped turkey, she wanted the $7 decorative turkey?! Sigh.


And then we were off again! We drove along a little scenic route (off of highway 169 for awhile), and then drove through Le Sueur. There we saw the Mayo house, the wooden Jolly Green Giant (but not the 3D statue), and a cheese factory. We were hoping to get cheese curds at the cheese shop, but it turned out to be more of just a small corner store that sold homemade pizza. Super disappointing.

Next up was Mankato! After getting a little turned around trying to find the areas mentioned in the newspaper article, we finally ended up in the "old town" area. We were expecting a touristy little area (like Northfield), but instead found just three or four little shops in the area that was clearly on the cusp of becoming revitalized but just not quite there yet.  We stopped at the local bakery since one of us was in desperate need of a bathroom break, and then felt beholden to buy something.  (Twist my arm.)

Rose LOVED her cupcake.

By then we were all pretty hopped up on sugar,  so we needed some protein and veg to give us some lasting energy. Mike did some google searching to find a brew-pub type restaurant in the area, and we ended up at the Boulder Tap House. It had pretty good food and a large selection of beers, but the cheese curd appetizer we got was a weird fried cheddar heese cube thing. Our second disappointing cheese experience of the day!

Love the light in this picture! It's so nice to have my camera back again.

After lunch it was starting to get close to nap time, so we decided to do "one last thing" before heading for home. It was such a beautiful day, so I lobbied hard for a walk in a park. We found a beautiful location that made us all happy - Rose had a playground, Mike could sit and relax, and I got to go off and explore with my camera!

 

There were "motivating" signs all over this park.

 We also explored the park a bit together.

There were two weddings going on, and Rose was enthralled by the brides and the bridesmaids in their "princess dresses." 

 We had a bit of a scare at the end of the park exploration, when we realized that Rose's doll had fallen out of Mike's pocket. We painstaking retraced our steps, and luckily found her in the area where they had been walking "off trail" earlier. Whew!

With that, we got back in the car and headed for home. We made two quick stops along the way (one to pick up a growler for Mike, and the other to check out some lake that Mike heard was good for ice fishing). Of course Rose fell asleep only about 15min away from home, but luckily she stayed asleep in the car for a full 45min sleep cycle anyway. By that time it was about 4:30pm - what a day!  I'm thankful for my repaired camera, for such a beautiful fall day, and for having such an awesome family that is willing to do crazy day trips like this with me. :)

Tall girl

Check out the outlier on that otherwise normal distribution!