Run for the Border

Wednesday, we checked out of the hotel and started making our way up the North Shore.  Our first stop was at Gooseberry Falls State Park.  We parked at the rest area and hiked down the paved path that led to the Middle and Lower Falls.  The water level was low enough that it was possible to walk out in the river bed to see the waterfalls close up.

Between Middle Falls and Lower Falls was a rock arch.

Climbing under, I had a nice view looking downstream.

There was a nice view of Lower Falls here as well.

I could see Middle Falls the bridge just upstream.

Climbing further down, I crossed the river to get up to Lower Falls from the base.

The Lower Falls was really scenic.

There are actually two sections of the Lower Falls, but the river-right had low water flow.

As we were scrambling on the rocks, there was some lightning, so we headed back to the rest area and sat under a shelter for the storm to pass.  We talked to a local guy whose wife's brother died jumping from the Upper Falls.  Swimming near there is now prohibited.  After the storm passed, we headed back to the river and spotted some mountain-ash berries.

There was a nice view of the Middle Falls from above here.

Then we crossed under the highway to view the Upper Falls.

The view from the trail was pretty good.

And there were some cool cliffs along the trail as well.

As we got around to the other side, there was a memorial to the young man who died jumping from the Upper Falls.  I climbed down from here to get a good view of Upper Falls from the base.

There was a little green frog down here.

Then we continued upstream along the river.  There were some more caves along the river just upstream of the falls.

We soon crossed the river and it was about a mile to Fifth Falls.

There were a lot of cool caves along the river here.

The lower section, a chute was difficult to get a good view of.

But the upper cascades were very scenic.

All of these waterfalls on Gooseberry River were really scenic with beautiful volcanic rock and small caves.  We texted Chris and suggested they stop here as well on their way up the North Shore.  Above Fifth Falls was a footbridge over the river.

We crossed on the bridge for the views of the river and hiked back on the opposite side.

On the hike back, we spotted a big yellow fly agaric mushroom.

There were some bigleaf aster flowering.

Rose hips are the fruit of a wild rose.

Soon we were back to the car.

From here, we continued driving northeast all the way to the Canadian border.  Just before the border, we made the last turn to enter Grand Portage State Park.  A half-mile paved trail led from the visitor center to a boardwalk out to see High Falls, the highest waterfall in Minnesota.

There were three overlooks from which to view this spectacular waterfall on the Canadian border.

From the highest, the lower cascades were visible.

We could see down the Pigeon River gorge as well.

After some pictures, we got on the Middle Falls Trail.  In about a half-mile, there was a bench with a nice view of Lake Superior.

Shortly past here was a spur that led up to a nice overlook.

From one side we could see south towards Lake Superior and from the other side, north into Canada.

Continuing on, there were some pear-shaped puffball mushrooms growing on rotting wood.

We soon came to the split and went left to head down to the Pigeon River.  We came out near Little Falls, a small cascading waterfall.

Just downstream was Middle Falls.

There was a nice view from the top to see how powerful the water was.

A little further down the trail we got out into the river for a more distant view from the base.

The views of the Pigeon River gorge were very nice despite the clouds.

Then we started making our way back.  Along the way, some bigleaf aster was blooming.

Some scaly pholiota mushrooms had popped up along the trail.

When we reached the parking lot, we ran into Chris and Mel.  They had taken our advice and stopped at Goooseberry Falls and so were late getting up here.  They were going to run out to see High Falls while we started making our way back.

We checked into Cabin 2 at Cascade River and had dinner at the restaurant.  There was potential for a good sunrise so we went to bed early.