Continuing to head north towards our destination of the town of Lutsen, Minnesota, we stopped at the Northshore Scenic Overlook.
This was our first real view of Lake Superior on this trip as the drive, up to this time, only gave us small glimpses. After parking our car, we took a small path down to the overlook.
The summer flowers were still blooming.
Finally — the overlook!
The road you see below is the one we were on and that will continue to take us to Lutsen.
The large circular tanks you see below are called clarifying ponds and they are used to recycle water for the taconite (iron formation) processing plants.
Heading back to the car, we drove a little ways and stopped again at milepost 57 at the Palisade Head which is a large rock formation on the north shore of Lake Superior. A couple of young men got our of their cars in the parking lot and jumped over the rocks to climb the cliff we were on. That was a little spooky for me as they weren’t traveling together — who will “spot” them?
Walking around the area, I spied an artist further below painting the scenery.
Here’s a closer look at the artist and her painting …
And here is a picture of what this artist is painting although she can see more of the lake and rocks from her viewpoint.
Pretty cool, eh?
The next stop we made was at a rest area at milepost 79 on Highway 61 at the Cross River. It was really pretty here also because there are waterfalls. (Oh — click here for a link that shows the rest areas along Highway 61.)
Notice how the sky is now blue? The weather is getting warmer now that the sun is out.
Here’s the view from one side of the bridge. The river was “raging.”
To the right was a small grotto that brought to my mind the movie called The Song of Bernadette. (Do you remember the movie? It came out back in 1943 and was about a young girl who said she had visions from the virgin Mary.)
This is the view of the other side of the bridge …
Now it was time to continue to our final destination — the Lutsen Resort in Lutsen, Minnesota.
We checked in and proceeded to the condo that we had rented. Walking into the room, the first thing I did was look out at the view fully expecting to see Lake Superior. Unfortunately this premium room with views of Lake Superior was lacking. What I saw was a view of trees — lots of trees — with peek-a-boo views of water. Literally peek-a-boo. I had to stretch my neck to see in between the leaves for a peek of the water. No. This would not work.
I remember when I called to make the reservation I asked the woman if we had a view of Lake Superior and she said “yes, this is a premium condo.” I then explained to her that I wanted to make sure because when we had stayed in previous resorts we had gotten rooms that had peek-a-boo views. Â And here we were in the same situation.
I called the front desk immediately and spoke to the woman who checked us in. She assured me we were in a premium room and I asked her to come check it out for herself. Instead, she sent someone with keys for a different room that she assured me (again) was a premium condo. When the woman arrived with a set of keys for a different room, I showed her the view and asked her if this is what they meant by premium and she said “no, this room should not be listed as premium.”
Yeah, I knew I wasn’t going crazy. Moving our things out of the condo, we headed over to our new one. Again, I looked out the balcony to see the view. Okay, so, this was so-so. I wasn’t going to argue because I didn’t want to move again as I really wanted this to be a stress-free getaway.
The view from this second condo (which was in the lower level of the building) was half of the lake on the left and trees and a “mound” of grass on the right. Bleh. Oh well. I’ve already given feedback to the resort via email since they asked.
Here’s a picture but for some reason it didn’t come out very clear. Â Bummer.
I was thankful we arrived safely and had, for now, settled down.
More on the resort in the next post.
Related posts:
2 thoughts on “An Autumn Getaway – First Day, Afternoon”