Tettegouche

Friday morning, I woke up early again and went down to the lake just before sunrise.  It was too cloudy this morning, however.  Since I was up, I headed over to Cascade River State River to see the Cascades and Cascade Falls again.

The waterfalls were beautiful in the early morning light.

Wearing water shoes, I went down to Cascade River to see if I could creek walk up to the base, but there was a deep spot I couldn't get around.  I spotted some fireweed as I was hiking back out.

By the time I got back to the cabin, Sandy was awake and it was almost time for breakfast.

We had breakfast at the restaurant then started getting packed up.  We were heading west today, but made our first stop at Tettegouche State Park.  Before reaching the main part of the park, we turned on County Road 1 and stopped at a pull off.  It was a just a short walk down to Baptism River at the top of Illgen Falls.

There were some cascades just above the main drop.

The view from the trail was pretty good, but of course I wanted to get to the base.

There was a very steep scramble path to get down to the river level for a view from the bottom.

After some pictures, we headed back and drove to the main part of the park.  Heading down the High Falls Trail, we passed under the highway and continued for about a mile to a steep set of stairs heading down to Two Step Falls.

As the name suggests, the waterfall is in two sections.  It was rather scenic, but nothing compared to what was just upstream.  A short ways further on the trail we came to a path leading down to the base of High Falls.

High Falls is the highest waterfall completely in the state of Minnesota and was really spectacular.

After some pictures from the base, we continued on the main trail towards the top.

There was a nice view from the trail as it led past the top.

A suspension bridge led over the river here, but this was as far as we were going today.

Back at the car, we made the short drive to the visitor center parking and hiked the Shovel Point Trail.

There were great views of the rugged Lake Superior shoreline with crashing waves.

The trail climbed up to Shovel Point with elevated views.

From here, it dropped down towards the shore with numerous spots to go out for views.

The trail ended at a wooden overlook with gorgeous views of the choppy waters.

It was extremely windy out here at the overlook, though much less so everywhere else on the trail.

Due to the wind, we didn't stay long.  Tettegouche was a really beautiful and diverse park, but we needed to get going as we had a long drive towards North Dakota.

It was several hours to drive across Minnesota.  When we were almost to Fargo, we made a quick stop at Buffalo River State Park to stretch our legs and let the dog out.

It was a beautiful tallgrass prairie but we didn't have time for a long hike and the mosquitoes were bad.  We finished up the drive to Fargo and checked into the La Quinta Inn for the night.  Tired from the long drive, we just ordered a pizza to the room.