Date DAY Road Trip – Duluth, MN and Beyond

I’ve got some vacation time saved up and what better reason to use it than to take my lady out of town with a specific intent to relax and take it easy. It started by sleeping amazingly late, which then called into question even hitting the road. We didn’t even have a destination, so we waffled a bit about driving somewhere. We had no plans the next day, so we said, “Screw it!”, and threw some clothes in the car just in case we ended up driving too far and had to stay in a hotel or something along the way.

We thought we’d head north up towards Duluth, where I’ve heard seeing the leaves change colors is absolutely beautiful. We left in the early afternoon, after a quick stop a Nina’s coffee shop – one of D.Rough’s favorites. We headed north and took our time driving. In fact, we stopped by the Black Bear Casino on the way so we could play some slot machines. Literally, like a 20 minute stop and then we left again.

We hit Duluth, knowing full well we were going to go further north than that. It was just a stop-over for a quick bite to eat and then back in the car. We wanted to go to Hell’s Kitchen, but it was strangely closed and may have had a change of ownership or a name change (I will have to investigate further). So we walked down the street to Grandma’s Saloon (touristy, but the food is decent and not terribly expensive). We thought it might be happy hour, and we were right – we have a knack for predicting things like that. We grabbed some wings and onion rings and a couple of girly drinks to tide us over until dinner. Then on the way back to the car, we just HAPPENED to stop by the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory for a turtle caramel apple… and some chocolate dipped graham crackers…

We stopped along the way and walked down next to the water of Lake Superior. It is absolutely beautiful up this far north this time of year. We took some photos of the lakeshore and had the perfect lighting for some awesome shots. [Side note: D.Rough’s roller derby team won the “Golden Skate” at the 2010 season championships this past year and all of the skaters have been taking it on various road trips and fun events with them. We had the Golden Skate with us on this road trip, so we took some photos with it on the shore.]


We got back in the car and headed north a bit further. There were a couple of really awesome tunnels that we drove through, so I thought that was pretty awesome. We drove past a pretty cool looking stream dumping water right out into Lake Superior, so we decided to stop and check it out. We weren’t in a rush or anything, so we hiked down to the water and checked out how cold it was. Oddly enough, it was very cold (yes, that was sarcasm).
How often do you get to walk in a beautiful stream in the woods – not often enough, I say.
So we took off a couple layers of clothes we didn’t want to get dirty and hopped in the frigid water. D.Rough even saw a giant fish swim by.




And we did freak out another couple that hiked down the hillside to the stream and saw a pile of clothes… They just kept walking further downstream – hahahaha.



We got back in the car and kept going north. We drove past Betty’s Pies, which is a famous pie place in Minnesota and probably worth a stop. We thought we’d hit it on the way back, either tonight or tomorrow, depending on what happened. We had decided we were going to hit up Canada and spend the night… right before we realized we would need passports to complete this plan and neither of us had brought our passports. Sigh… Oh well. We would drive until it got dark and then head back home maybe.

We drove through the awesome town of Castle Danger at one point. We both determined it would be an awesome place to own a summer home. It’s a very quaint little town without a lot going on. Plus, when your friends asked you what you were doing that weekend, you could reply with, “I’m headed to CASTLE DANGER!” in a super creepy ominous voice of doom!!!!.... DOOOM!!!! DOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!

We saw a sign for Gooseberrry Falls, which apparently is some sort of state park on the North Shore. (Also, not at all related to Cap’n Crunch.) It was starting to get dark now, but D.Rough was convinced we could make it… We DID, in fact, make it. But seriously, it was dark at this point. We walked through the woods down to the falls and there were people heading back up the trails with flash lights. We didn’t care – we were still going to see the falls. Once we got down to the falls, we took what photos we could with the point and click camera she brought. D.Rough tried a couple settings and ended up with a shutter speed slow enough to almost make out the falls in the picture. Here is what it looks like without a flash - I TOLD you it was dark. I have NO idea how D.Rough's photo turned out as good as it did in the darkness.
We then took a couple photos with the flash that ended us blinding us on the super slippery rocks. Once we actually saw how slimy and slippery the rocks were in the pitch black, we started getting a little more reserved about leaping over what we first thought were small puddles or streams. They weren’t small at all.


At one point while we were walking around in the dark, there was a pair of people (husband and wife maybe?) walking around with a flashlight. One of them went down hard into one of the streams and we sort of stuck around to make sure they didn’t need help back to the top. Thankfully they didn’t. We stuck around for another 15 or 20 minutes after they left to see if a ranger would eventually come down and check out the falls for stragglers. It never happened. On the way back, we got a little bit turned around in the dark (whoops!), but we eventually made it back to our car. Really, it was quite a fun trip to the falls. We both now wonder what the falls look like in the daylight.

Since there wasn’t much point in heading further north, due to our lack of passports, we headed back south for home. We pulled into Betty’s Pies for a fantastic dinner RIGHT as they were kicking people out and closing down for the night. It was awful – you get your hopes up for world famous pies (well, SOME of the people in the car had their hopes up higher than others), and then those hopes are dashed on the rocks. We decided we’d eat at Fitger’s in Duluth. Fitger’s is a brew-pub in an old hotel-type building with some shops and restaurants in it. We meant to eat there earlier this year when we were in town for roller derby with ManJar, but we couldn’t get a table without waiting for 2 hours. So we thought we’d check it out since we had time to kill. I’ll post that review separately from this, but dinner was decent here.

We ended up getting home about midnight from our little adventure. It was really nice to get away and not be on a schedule and not have to answer to anybody, especially work. I have a feeling we’ll be doing this again sometime soon. Hopefully, it will involve an actual trip – with passports – to Canada so we can witness their crazy metric system first-hand!

Top 5 things about Date Day Road Trip
1. No work. No schedule. No pressure.
2. It’s beautiful countryside
3. Gooseberry Falls (even in the pitch black)
4. Super cold stream on the side of the road
5. Beautiful photos of the lake shore

Bottom 5 things
1. Betty’s Pies shot us down
2. We all know what cold water does…
3. It gets dark earlier, so we couldn’t see as many leaves as we’d have liked
4. Forgot our passports
5. Black Bear Casino would NOT let us take photos of the Golden Skate in the casino. Sadface.