Summer Vacation Highlights

Our July and August months flew past. We spent a lot of time outside in the Twin Cities. We travelled up north for a week in July to visit several locations. We started out on the Iron Range. Here is a rest stop where we pulled off to take a look at an old mine pit. The water area is where a mine pit has been in filled in with water. This is a mining vehicle. The kids are standing in front of the wheel. It's amazing to see it in real life as it's gigantic! They would use these vehicles to haul ore out from the mines.

Little cabin in the woods.... this was the cabin we stayed at on a beautiful lake. The kids enjoyed their time roaming out on a big rock that was next to the lake and scaring us silly. They played a "war" game with sticks and were chasing each other until we put a stop to that when they were dangerously near the water! They didn't seem to even notice the near death drops as they would run out on the rock, but we sure did!

We went on a LONG hike while we stayed at the cabin. It was a six mile hike that these troopers made! Towards the end we were all pushing to get back to the car! They made it and slept real well that night!

Here's all of us posing on the trail. I think Gabriel was the most enthusiastic of all the kids!

Following our stay in a cabin, we headed down towards Lake Superior and visited a mine on the way. We went deep underground sporting these fancy helmets. It was mighty cold in the mine, but we got to experience it the way the true miners did way back in the day! If you ever are up that way, it's a really neat ride! It's the Soudan mine- a state park.

Following our stay here, we headed to Tettegouche State Park on Lake Superior. We stayed there for two nights. One of the nights we had a mighty bad rain fall. The kids enjoyed going on hikes, visiting the lake and on the rainy day travelling all the way up north to the Canadian border. We had to stop in Grand Marais and visit the donut shop and Artist's Point! Despite the rainy cold, it was a lovely drive!

Pictures out on Artist's Point in Grand Marais:
World's Best Donut Shop:

Gooseberry Falls:

Finally, we stayed one night in a hotel in Duluth, Minnesota to recover from our camping experience! This was the most fun end to a trip as we all got clean and were able to have a blast at the water park in the hotel.
The kids loved this the most as a bell would ring and then a sudden tidal wave would pour over them as the bucket at the top of the play area would dump a ton of water out!