Occasionally your scrapblog editor gets tired of her noisy job, what with its incessant police scanner and arguing reporters, and likes to get outta town on her days off. Usually, that's to lovely Lake City, Minn., our ancestral hamlet. But this past week, the yen to go north, rather than south, struck, and I spent my midweek days off at Gooseberry Cabins, one of two mom-and-pop cabin resorts on the North Shore (the other being Castle Haven) where three generations of cousins have spent time through the years. Enjoyed two days of hiking in still wintry woods (snow still lay in the ravines, and very few wildflowers were out yet, but the lack of leaves allowed for great visibility in the woods; saw lots of birds and deer). Read three books, cooked some nice experimental meals, drank a little merlot and generally got the blood pressure down for the plunge back into the urban world of work and cacophony. A few snapshots:
Squinting out at the great lake. I kept thinking about how I lived in Duluth for eight years, and though I appreciated Lake Superior then, I'm not sure I appreciated it enough. Now, seen so infrequently, it seems extra magnificent, rare, exotic, magical. I recently had the privilege to review a novel by a Duluthian who has the same feeling about the lake, and the talent to translate it into exceptional fiction. Highly recommended --
Danielle Sosin's "Long Shining Waters."
Gooseberry Falls was thunderous, thick with water from recent rains and snowmelt. Better yet, there was almost nobody there. I highly recommend visiting the North Shore before Memorial Day.
The great lake as seen from the front of my little Gooseberry Cabin. (
Gooseberry Cabins is northeast of Castle Danger, right on the lake, run by Karen and Tim Erickson, as it has been for decades.)
Walked a couple times a day down the gravel road to Hwy. 61, then back into
Castle Haven, the neighboring resort where we more often stayed as kids. Castle Haven is still a cool place, but it's been upgraded and is more expensive and fancier now than Gooseberry Cabins, which have kept their 1950s feel -- no TVs, phones, just simple cabins right on the rocks. Stilll, it was fun to walk around Castle Haven, see the old fishhouse where the long-deceased Lind siblings, Edgar, Mark and Florence, once worked, and remember happy family times there.
I stayed in one unit of the Gooseberry Cabins "tricabin." No one else was there on my weekday days off, so it was utterly quiet and deserted. Perfect for a city gal's getaway.
The woods next to my cabin.
The great lake as seen from the front of my little Gooseberry Cabin. (Gooseberry Cabins is northeast of Castle Danger, right on the lake, run by Karen and Tim Erickson, as it has been for decades.)
Walked a couple times a day down the gravel road to Hwy. 61, then back into Castle Haven, the neighboring resort where we more often stayed as kids. Castle Haven is still a cool place, but it's been upgraded and is more expensive and fancier now than Gooseberry Cabins, which have kept their 1950s feel -- no TVs, phones, just simple cabins right on the rocks. Stilll, it was fun to walk around Castle Haven, see the old fishhouse where the long-deceased Lind siblings, Edgar, Mark and Florence, once worked, and remember happy family times there.
I stayed in one unit of the Gooseberry Cabins "tricabin." No one else was there on my weekday days off, so it was utterly quiet and deserted. Perfect for a city gal's getaway.
The woods next to my cabin.
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