Jay Cooke State Park, Minnesota
September 6, 2023
We were especially looking forward to our stay at Jay Cooke State Park because our three kids were driving up from St. Paul to spend the Labor Day weekend with us.
A beautiful morning's drive on the backroads of northern Minnesota
Our pleasant campsite at Jay Cooke State Park
It was a good thing that we had a shady site, because we had some unexpected hot weather while we were there. We've always thought of the Duluth area as being colder than pretty much everywhere else, but not during our stay! On the Sunday before Labor Day, Duluth saw its hottest September temperature on record at 97 degrees.
When we arrived on Tuesday, the heat wave had not yet materialized, and we were treated to temperatures mostly in the 70s. We did a much needed deep clean on the inside of the camper on Wednesday and a mega amount of laundry at the local laundromat.
No wifi at this laundromat, so we hit the stack of magazines. Pretty sure we weren't anywhere near the South here.
On Thursday, we rode our bikes about 25 miles on the Munger Trail (a rails to trails trail) which goes right through Jay Cooke.
Perhaps this wouldn't be a bad name for the trail if you wanted to keep it from getting too crowded 😉
Love all the aspen and/or birch trees!
The kids arrived for the weekend (Audrey and Alan on Friday night and Andrew on Saturday), and we had a very enjoyable time hiking, eating, sightseeing, and just hanging out.
We made a 6 mile loop out of the Carlton trail and bits of other trails. This route provided a nice amount of rock scrambling along the river.
The "swinging" bridge over the geologically interesting St. Louis River
Look around at the view from the bridge
Like mother, like daughter 😊
Look around at a couple of views of the river
It looked like rafting this river was quite challenging, with all the rocks and mini waterfalls
For fun, we calculated that it would take at least 4 of these cars to tow our beast
What to do when the watermelon juice overfloweth
On the hottest day (Sunday), we drove to Duluth to the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center. Julie remembers from way back in the age when dinosaurs roamed the earth, when we all got the weather report from watching the nightly news on tv, there would be a map of the US showing all the daily temperatures. The coldest city was always International Falls, Minnesota, and the second coldest was Duluth.
Not on this day. Even walking right along Lake Superior, there was not the slightest hint of a cool breeze. At least the Visitor Center had air conditioning. Plus, it had a bunch of Fresnel lenses and all sorts of interesting maritime facts concerning the region.
Duluth, Minnesota
The aerial lift bridge, being raised for boats to pass underneath
From there, we drove to a random beach (any beach would do!) to plunge in the cool waters of Lake Superior.
The path to the beach
There was no place to change into our swimsuits, so we just waded in the lake
Lots of skipping stones to be found here
Add your own caption here
Nice view of the people, but the lake really didn't stitch well . . .
At the swinging bridge, after sunset
On Monday morning, we took another trail off of the campground to a couple of overlooks of the St. Louis River (a bit over 4 miles).
Look around from the bench at the overlook
Afterwards, Alan couldn't resist some daring rock climbing at the end of the campground loop...
Could there be a new Free Solo movie in Alan's future?
Ok, so this is a more realistic view of the big rock that Alan climbed 😉
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