We continued our Minnesota adventures with a visit to Tettegouche State Park, on the shores of Lake Superior.
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Tom was rudely awoken just after 7 am by the high pitch buzzing of the mosquito we had failed to find the night before. Drowsy attempts to swat her failed, and she had gone into hiding again by the time we got the lights on. Christine scared her out of hiding later in the morning, though, when she moved the items on her "bathroom shelf" (which actually hangs at the end of the bed"), and we fried her extra crispy with the electronic fly swatter!
The mosquito "parties" going on in our ceiling vent were getting quite out of hand, though. (Mind you: these are just the morning stragglers; we have 10 times as many at night when it's dark outside and the lights are on in the coach.)
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We continued following the shoreline northeast for another 11 miles (about 15 minutes) until we reached the Palisade Head lower parking area. There was a "ROAD NARROWS" sign on the road leading to the upper parking area, so we decided not to risk it and hoofed the remaining half mile up by foot. It ended up being a good call all around, because the road not only narrowed to what one would normally consider to be one lane wide, but the pavement on that one lane was in pretty bad shape in places, and the upper parking lot was both extremely small and quite full. The views from the top were "okay, but not stellar".
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Another three miles up the road brought us to Tettegouche State Park. There normally is a trail that goes up to High Falls and then goes over the river and loops around to Two Step Falls before returning again, but they told us at the Visitor Center that a flood a few days before we arrived had washed out the suspension bridge so the trail out to High Falls was now a 1.5 mile out-and-back trail each way. The trail ended up having some pretty large muddy stretches that had to be circumvented by walking through the trees / bushes, but we eventually made it to the junction with a side spur that leads to an 83 step stairway down to a river-level viewing platform of the falls. Or rather - used to. They failed to mention at the Visitor Center that the viewing platform had been washed away as well.
Undaunted, we climbed out onto the muddy bank and dangled phone cameras out over the rushing river water to bring you these photos and video of Minnesota's tallest (at 63 feet) waterfall.
We climbed back up the steps and continued to the top of High Falls. Like many we've seen recently, High Falls was very impressive from a sheer "volume of water" perspective (no doubt thanks to the recent rains).
The top of the falls also provided a pretty good view of the Baptism River valley.
A little ways upstream, we could see the wrecked remains of the suspension bridge.
On the way back, we started taking the side trail out to Two Step Falls, even though they had warned us at the Visitor Center that the floods may have washed out the bottom steps there. But that side trail got increasingly muddy and the mosquitoes were intense, so we returned to the main trail and headed back to the Visitor Center.
We took a quick look through the (scant) displays in the Visitor Center, and then had a long leisurely lunch in the T42 (because we were able to pull in the Visitor Center WiFi from there). A little while back, we had bought a
permethrin insect repellent spray (designed for use on clothing and gear) from Walmart, thinking that using it on the T42's screens might keep mosquitoes and other insects from hanging around long enough to find ways around them. We cleaned the MaxxFan (ceiling vent) screen and treated it with the new permethrin spray as an "initial test" while in the parking lot as well.
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Another 85 miles northeast brought us to our stopping place for the next two nights: the "Grand Portage Lodge and Casino (and Marina and RV Campground)" (how's that for a really long name? We'll just call it the GPLCMRC instead 😉). Check-in ended up being something of a PITA because they "lost" our reservation when switching systems three months ago (despite the fact that the old system had sent us a reminder/confirmation just yesterday). Then they booked us into a site that we discovered was already occupied when we got there, so we just took another one and let them know when they called to confirm a few minutes later. A very disorganized operation!
In the bath house, Tom had to hunt down and kill 6 mosquitoes (all quite bloody) before getting undressed - and couldn't close the window to prevent more from getting in, because it was broken. The GPLCMRC was not making a great first (or second) impression. 😐
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