Friday
I took off workon Friday so that we wouldn’t be rushed on our drive up north. Our destination was a bed and breakfast on the Gunflint Trail, 30 miles past Grand Marais. Tally and I were excited for a last get-away before the baby came. I heard that it was peak colors up there so I was excited for some quiet hiking, canoeing, and stargazing under the changing leaves.
The owners of the B&B are an elderly couple named Barbara and Ted. When I told Barbara over the phone that Tally was nine months pregnant, she was concerned that she would have trouble on the guided canoe trip we had signed up for–there would be uneven ground, a fair amount of walking, and getting into and out of canoes. I told her that, while yes she was quite pregnant, she was still mobile and could walk just fine but at Barbara’s insistance we got a note from the midwife saying that she was good to go. The only restriction was that she couldn’t walk more than a mile at a time.
Borrowing my parents’ TT, we left home in the late morning and made it up to Grand Marais around 5pm. We had an hour or two to kill so we explored the main street there. We ended up eating some of the “world’s greatest donuts,” bought some homemade fudge (chocoloate-walnut and chocolate-caramel), and ate some much-needed dinner at the Gun Flint Tavern. We then made our way down the beautiful Gunflint, overshot our destination by about 10 miles, made our way back and finally arrived at the Poplar Creek Guesthouse.