Minnesota, Part 2 - Gooseberry Falls State Park [240620]

Thursday was a pretty full day, with almost four hours of driving to get to our next stopping place and shopping and sight seeing planned on the way.

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Looking out our window Thursday morning, we spotted the other Travato we had seen drive in yesterday - now parked a couple of sites away.  However, the drizzly rain and rampant mosquitoes outside kept us from trying to go out and be social.

The mosquitoes seem to have found a "new" attempted entry point into the coach:  the ceiling fan vent.  We noticed several buzzing around the screen up there.

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Shortly after leaving Copper Falls, Tom and a baby deer discovered exactly how effective the ProMaster anti-lock brakes are at stopping a 9300 pound van on a wet roadway.

We drove 99 miles (about 2 hours) west and north-ish, crossing back over into Minnesota (having previously visited back in Iowa, Part 1 - A Holy Grotto, and Getting Spammed in Minnesota [240526-27]) shortly before 1 pm...

...before stopping at the Costco in Duluth to pick up a few items (and a pizza!), as well as at the Walmart down the road for some groceries.

Another 35 miles (45 minutes) northeast up the road brought us to Two Harbors, where we saw this rather large gentleman...

...on our way to Betty's Pies - highly recommended by Aunt Michele and the rest of the relatives in Michigan.  We picked up a slice of Five Layer Chocolate Cream and a slice of Betty's Blueberry for later.

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From Betty's it was another 11 miles to Gooseberry Falls State Park.  We walked the 1 mile loop trail to see the Middle Falls, . . . 

. . . Lower Falls, . . .

. . . and then Upper Falls.

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Then it was another 7 miles north to Split Rock Lighthouse State Park, where we'd be spending the night - and where we bought yet another state's Annual Park Pass.  (The "lower passenger side corner" is starting to get a little crowded now 😉.)

We drove down to Pebble Beach on the way to the campground for views of the lighthouse.

Then it was up to our campsite to get settled in for the evening.

We were still kind of full from the Costco pizza earlier in the day, so for dinner we just had salads - and our Betty's pie slices.

We stayed up until midnight, waiting for a mosquito that had buzzed Tom earlier in the evening to appear again so we could kill it, but it never did.  More adventures awaited us in the morning...