June 2015

Last June we spent three days in northern Minnesota. Neither of us had been to the Duluth area. It was more than we expected.

We camped the first night (only to have it rain most of the time!). The next morning we were all packed up and in the car by 7 or 7:30. It wasn't ideal, but we all were having fun and enjoying the adventure. We still got to do s'mores and tin foil dinners the evening before, which is always memorable. We camped at Jay Cooke State Park, and highly recommend it. They have the coolest walking bridge. The rock formations were incredible. We loved hiking right along the river.

The second night we stayed at Spirit Mountain Villas. This was suggested to us by some really good friends, the Ericksons. Each "treehouse" is an octagon shaped home that is built 15 feet or so above the ground. We were surrounded by trees and had a spectacular view overlooking Duluth. It was really nice to be able to sleep in a bed the second night, see the lights of the city at night, and of course dry out all of our camping gear on the deck. We REALLY loved that place and maybe we will go back again!!!

One of the coolest hikes we did was Gooseberry Falls in the Duluth area. There are three major falls, upper, middle, and lower. They are GORGEOUS. Our kids were on cloud 9. They could walk across the water from rock to rock. The weather was perfect and we stayed for a loooong time. I stayed with Lauren in a more conservative spot and Vance took Lincoln to get really close to the falls, close enough that they could get a little wet. Lincoln was so brave.

They HELD HANDS all on their own. Too cute not to snap a shot.



Hiking at a local county park.








It just took a little bit of convincing to buzz Lincoln's hair. I felt a little bad because it was much shorter than I had planned. With his pale complexion and blonde hair, 1/8" was a little too short:) He looked like he had chemo or was really sick for a few days:)



We brought up the swing (gifted to us by our family, Scott and Rachel) because Lauren found it in the basement. She loved pretending she was a baby.