Time Away

We took our vacation.  It was fantastic.  It was relaxing.  It was just the right amount of time.  Maybe another day would have been good, but three days of not being home was very nice.  The only downside was that my wife had a cold while we were up there.  Weird right?  Summer colds are just...odd.

The weather was outstanding.  I was a bit worried about the weather because most of what we wanted to do was outside.  And what do you do when it rains outside?  You find stuff to do inside.  Usually you look to going to malls and stores, which is not as cool when you live in a metro area and have access to the stores.  We did not do any shopping.  We did spend quite a bit of time outside.  Practically all day on the 5th was spent outdoors, minus drive time.  We went up to a couple of state parks that were half an hour or so north of Duluth.  The drive reminded me so much of driving in the U.P.  We were able to step foot in Lake Superior.  It's cold on the western end just it is on the eastern end.  Proof of being in the lake:

I went up to my ankles.  That was enough.  Like I said, it was cold.  We had a picnic and enjoyed the scenery.  There weren't any black flies or mosquitoes driving us crazy.  Just a few flies here and there.  It was busy because it was a weekend and a holiday weekend at that.   

We spent some time with friends from high school/college.  For all the complaining I do about social media, the only way we were able to see them was because we are all Facebook friends.  It was great to see them, and they were great resources for things to do.  They told us which restaurant to stop at and get pie (The Rustic Inn) on our way up the shore.  And....AND...they hooked us up with a great view for the fireworks.  On top of a building!  Away from the people and congestion. 

I only took a handful of pictures of the fireworks because I wanted to actually watch them with my eyes and not through the screen of my phone. 
I'm sure that if we had spent one more day up there, we would have been able to find some more stuff to do.  But then again, Duluth isn't huge, so two days without having concrete plans was just enough.  We did agree though that if we were to do another trip like this, it would be on a weekend that was not a holiday weekend.  Just dealing with extra traffic on the roads was all we needed to know that we didn't want to do it again.  And we thought about that after we started making plans, but we stuck with it.  And I'm happy we did.  Like I said, it was nice and relaxing and it was a new adventure. 

44/120