Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Vacation 2009

We started out on Tuesday evening about 4 P.M. after Dan got off work. We were late picking Katlin up due to road construction on Highway#1.
we did learn a cool move from one of the construction workers who must have worked at an airport at some point in his life. It was worth a couple of laughs. Picked Miss Katlin up about 5:45 and drove to Forest Lake, Mn. to a Comfort Inn and Suites for the night. Nice comfortable beds and an exhaust fan in the bathroom. Nice.
After a good hot breakfast we left for Duluth and our first stop the Lighthouse Restaurant for lunch. Then on to Gooseberry Falls Park.


Here are Gooseberry Falls. They really were beautiful. Dan Katlin and Connor are standing to the left of the picture. There is a short video at the bottom of this page. They about gave me heart failure. But then I am height challenged. I had to go back down the path and not look.

















Here they are at the top of the falls. Dan in the yellow shirt, Katlin in pink and Connor in gray








Here they are climbing down the falls. Connor and Katlin are behind that tree. The kids (all three of them ) had a good time in the park.



























Here is the view of the Split Rock Lighthouse from the shores of Lake Superior. It makes a postcard like scene. Really beautiful. This was our next and last stop of the day. We went up into the lighthouse and the view was wonderful. After being in the woods at Gooseberry Park the breeze off the lake was like air conditioning.












From the look on Katlin's face I'd say the water of lake Superior is pretty cold.


















To get to the bottom of Lake Superior from the Lighthouse you had to climb down and back up 171 stairs or there was a path that angled down not quite so steep.






After our full and exciting day of exploring we checked into the Holiday Inn and put on our best bib and tucker and went out to eat at the Top of the Harbour restaurant at the Raddison Hotel. It is a revolving restaurant and makes one rotatin every 70 minutes. Our waiter wasn't too friendly and the food wasn't the best I'd ever had but the view was amazing and Connor and Katlin really enjoyed the experience. It had rained before we left so took the sky walk to the hotel and it was about three miles of walking. In reality it was only three blocks away. We walked outside on the way home. This ends day one.