Minnesota encampment a higher place to visit

By 

Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Sunday Nov 13, 2011 8:19 AM

kerrI westenberg | Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Dusk settles over a ice-covered brook during Grand Marais, Minn.

GRAND
MARAIS, Minn. — Sandwiched between a gracefulness of Lake Superior and a Sawtooth Mountains,
Grand Marais seems ho-hum. But don’t let a rumpled downtown deceive. This is one of a best
bases for exploring a North Shore.

Stay in a hotel unaware a lake, ramble to a epicurean dinner, emporium during an art gallery or a
classic five-and-dime and try a outdoors. The city wows as many as a surrounding
scenery.

What to know

Tucked opposite Lake Superior, Grand Marais, race 1,351, was once a exhausted fishing village.
All that’s changed, in partial given it occupies one of a many scenic spots along a Arrowhead.
At a corner of town, a windblown separate of land juts out into a lake, assisting to form a brook and a
calm harbor.

For traveller information, revisit www.grandmarais.com.

What to do

The Gunflint Trail — that cuts internal to a Boundary Waters Canoe Area and where moose
sometimes ramble onto a highway — starts a circuitous approach in Grand Marais, though we don’t unequivocally need
to expostulate along that highway to feel mislaid among a elements. Instead, take a travel along a brook beach
to Artists’ Point, a peninsula of stone and hunger trees that juts out into Superior. It’s the
locals’ go-to hike.

If we wish some-more miles, not to discuss views, of a lake, conduct usually outward of city to
Pincushion Mountain Trail System (www.

pincushiontrails.org). Or cocktail onto a Superior Hiking Trail (www.shta.org) from a series of
entry points nearby Grand Marais.

Perhaps you’d rather travel from store to store downtown. The Sivertson Gallery (www.sivertson.
com) offers comfortable tea for sipping while browsing a collection of works from Inuit, Alaskan and
regional artists. The locally done valuables is good eye candy, too.

Joynes Ben Franklin Department Store offers all from Uggs and Carhartts to Barbie dolls
and Norwegian sweaters (www.joynes benfranklin.com).

With a petite size, Drury Lane Books looks like a fairytale house
(www.drurylanebooks.com). That’s suitable given a tiny though spellbinding collection.

Around a brook hook from downtown is a North House Folk School, a collection of clapboard
buildings where artisans learn hands-on classes (www.north house.org). Subjects embody knitting,
kayak-making and surprises such as “deer estimate for insatiable locavores.”

What to try

If you’re in need of rigging — or impulse — check out Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply
(www.stoneharborws.com) on a bay. The prohibited mark for outside sports non-stop in Jun 2010 and has
been offered and renting essential reserve — and some surprising cold outside toys — ever since.

In a summer, there are kayaks, canoes and paddleboards. But when sleet flies, this place
becomes a slicing corner of winter fun. You can lease a common cross-country skis and snowshoes.
But we can also lease — or buy — Wintergreen wardrobe (beyond comfortable and pricey), Snowtrekker winter
tents and a wood-burning stoves to keep them cozy, and Marquette skis, a arrange of ski-snowshoe
hybrid that lets we travel adult a snowy route and ski down a other side. Snow Harbor also offers
guided outings.

Where to eat

Judi Barsness not usually cooks well-developed dishes during her worldly harborside restaurant, Chez
Jude, she also teaches others how to do a same by charity cooking classes (www.chezjude.com;
closed in Nov and April). At Crooked Spoon Cafe, inventive, tasty dinners embody Lake
Superior fish with cucumber-corn penchant (www.crookedspooncafe. com; sealed until Dec. 27). For live
music and chili with a microbrew beer, conduct to Gun Flint Tavern (www.gunflinttavern.com).
Breakfasts are boundless during a Pie Place (www.northshorepieplace.com); don’t skip a maple
sausage.

Where to sleep

The Grand Marais’ website (www.grandmarais.com) offers links to a accumulation of camp options,
from cabins to BBs. I’ve enjoyed East Bay Suites, with oppulance units that have neat kitchens,
stone fireplaces and expanded views of a lake usually over a balcony
(www.eastbaysuites.com).