"The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer I spent in Duluth" - Mark Twain

To celebrate our anniversary and the end of Calder's first year of law school, we took a little trip up North to Duluth. Duluth is an adorable little port town on Lake Superior, which, who knew, is BEAUTIFUL! We started our trip by going to Gooseberry Falls which is about an hour from Duluth, driving along the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was a really fun little hike, that ended up being a lot longer than we had planned. I was only wanting to go around the falls on a path that was supposed to take an hour and a half. We ended up missing a turn or something, because we ended up going on a much longer trail that took us about 2 hours and we didn't make it to all the falls that I wanted. Oh well, it was a really fun walk through the woods and so so pretty!


At one point, we walked down to the water and Calder spotted a spot further down that he really wanted to get to. I suggested maybe we should get back on the trail and try to veer off further down and get to it. Well, I was told that the trail is boring and that wasn't going to fly. Here's how it went...


Here he is trying to figure out how to get to the center island part. I had forbid jumping over because, well, it just didn't seem like a good idea.


He has an idea.


Unfortunately, part of the tree broke as he was moving it. That's what happens when you try to make bridges out of dead trees.


And here is the bridge floating away. As he was working on another idea, I informed him that he had 3 mosquitoes on his leg and 2 on his arm. Suddenly the trail is acceptable.


So by now you might be thinking, 'These pictures are all of Calder - where was Ivy?!' Well, at one point I gave Calder the camera so I could be in some pictures too. This is all he took. Thanks babe, I'll take that camera back now.






I wanted to have a picture of both of us with the waterfall in the background. The first two tries Calder was making funny faces. This is our third attempt, with me watching him closely!

This was the end result of our looong walk. We tried to take a picture together here, but my camera batteries died at that very moment and shut off every time I set the timer.
After the falls, we checked into our Bed & Breakfast, the A.G. Thompson House and stayed in the Mayor's Chamber. It was adorable! It was pretty pricey and I don't feel the need to stay places like this often, but I loved staying somewhere homey and nice instead of a hotel. As soon as we drove up, one of the innkeepers, Tim, came out and greeted us and gave us a tour of the beautiful home. We went up to our room and Jacuzzid for awhile, which was nice after being outside all morning. Here are some pictures of the room, check the website for more!



Across from the fireplace was the jacuzzi. I insisted that we stay in a jacuzzi room! We turned on the fireplace and the air conditioner so we could have the comfy homey feeling of having a fire without burning up.

After hanging around our room for awhile, we finally decided on a restaurant for dinner. We had a couple of options but one of them was highly recommended and right down the road so we chose that one.

We had a little extra time so we walked around the lake. We found a spot where we could walk down and climb around on the really big rocks. Again, so fun and so pretty!



The water was freezing - felt like ice water!


It started to rain so we high tailed it back to the restaurant. We ate at the Blackwoods Grill and it was delicious. We had a coconut shrimp appetizer, then I had the North Atlantic Planked Salmon with a baked sweet potato and Calder had the Pan Seared Ahi Tuna with mashed potato. Both were soo tasty! Well, I loved mine, and Calder loved both of them. I tried the Ahi, but wasn't a huge fan. It tasted alright but the texture wasn't great.

When our waitress came around asking about dessert, they didn't have anything that looked spectacular, so we asked if she had a recommendation for a good dessert place.


She suggested this adorable malt shop, The Portland Malt Shoppe. You can't really tell in the picture, but it's a tiny little building, only about 9 feet deep inside. It was built to be a gas station a long time ago! We got a caramel malt with cookies and cream ice cream and it was to die for. I read on the website that it's the Portland Malt Shoppe because that area was at one point called Portland. The postmaster got annoyed because he kept receiving mail from several other Portlands so they converged with the neighboring city of Duluth.

We went back to our place and watched a movie, The Fog. It was pretty dumb but still scared me a few times.

This morning we slept in right until time to go down for breakfast. We had a fruit and yogurt parfait with a cranberry and white chocolate scone for the first course. The scone was up there on my list of the most delicious things I've ever had. The second course (that's right - a two course breakfast) was some potatoes and a cheddar omelet. I was able to easily eat around most of the cheese parts and loved it. It was also so fun to wake up and have someone serve me breakfast. We were the only guests that night so it was a little weird with it being just us.

After breakfast we got ready for the day and headed out. We went down to Canal Park and went in the touristy shops. I had a great time, and Calder tolerated it with no complaining!


After we went through all the shops, we walked out to look at the lighthouse. It was pretty anti-climatic but fun. I was disappointed since a 1000 ft long ship was supposed to be coming into the harbor at 1:00 at right at 1:00 there was no ship in sight. Bummer, but we decided that we'd have a long wait from the time we could finally see it before it got to the bridge, so we left.



Around the bridge area we saw this awesome little food stand. We went with hot dogs and fries since we were still stuffed from breakfast and dinner the day before, but they also had locally caught fried fish. It was actually a fishing boat that was found rotting away in a boatyard. Someone had the brilliant idea to turn it into a little restaurant stand. The food was really surprisingly good.

On our way out, we drove by the house in Cloquet where my dad lived for a year when he was 9 years old. Thanks Grandpa for the address - hopefully this is the right house!
Before we got home, we stopped in at the North Branch Outlets for a little shopping. It's about an hour north of where I live, so I've never been before. It was a lot of fun but I've seen better. I did buy this cute purse for 75% off!



Calder also got a really nice green dress shirt and tie that he's going to wear tomorrow for his first day of work!

We had a great anniversary getaway, I can't say enough how much fun we had and how nice it was to take a break from everything and just have fun, even if it was for just one night. I was trying to think of my favorite part, but I honestly can't even narrow it down to my 5 favorite parts. I truly loved every second of the trip.