hello everyone! we just got back from a very relaxing and beautiful weekend on the north shore of lake superior. i wanted to surprise tony with this trip, and just tell him to pack for an active fall weekend and get in the car and go, but i couldn’t keep a secret from him and told him right away! he likes to get really excited for trips, so i knew that this was actually better than surprising him anyway. one of the great things about the north shore is that it is dog-friendly for the most part, so we got to bring our little ella too. it is her birthday this week so we were also joking about it being her birthday trip. i can’t believe she is almost 6 years old! where does the time go? anyway, for my next post i plan to do a travel guide for a dog-friendly trip to this area. more on that later this week!
we had so many beautiful photos from our saturday spent hiking in cascade river state park, that i couldn’t wait to share. i also got a lot of questions from my photos on instagram, so i thought i would answer some here.
q: where is this magical place?
a: this is cascade river state park, which is between lutsen and grand marais. from our hotel in lutsen, it was about a 20 minute drive, and maybe 10 minutes from grand marais?
q: dog-friendly?
a: yes! the park is dog-friendly (as long as your dog is under your control, of course!) look out for a post later this week on dog-friendly activities on the north shore.
q: is there good hiking? how long are the hikes?
a: we did two of the three hikes at cascade river. first, we did the hike to lookout mountain, and then the waterfall trail. both of the trails combined took us around three hours. do not skip lookout mountain, it is a must! (more photos below!) there is a longer full-day hike that goes up and down the cascade river, but we didn’t have time. we heard great things about that one too.
q: wow! how were the fall colors?
a: i can’t say enough about the fall colors in this park! we picked the perfect weekend for this because colors were at absolute peak. gorgeous!
this is lookout point! we hiked up here and saw this view, and i couldn’t help but think that it looked like a painting. like it was fake. so beautiful!
the colors! on point.
lake superior views!
this is about the time when it started to legit rain on us. we didn’t care, we were still having a ball.
i don’t think you are technically supposed to take dogs off-leash, but hey, it’s her birthday trip. right?
ella was really in her element here. she absolutely loved the north shore and i am excited to share everything we did together in a post later this week!