Birthday Hikes on Minnesota's North Shore

Winter hiking trips along the North Shore of Minnesota are dreamy.

Especially when it’s not -60 degrees outside.

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted a blog, but that’s only because I’ve been a busy bee working away at tackling one of the most daunting items on my list: the trek to Mount Everest Base Camp. As some of you may know, I’ve officially booked my plane tickets to Nepal and selected and booked my trekking company for the adventure. I’ve been working out some of the finer details of the trip, including what I could possibly do with myself during a 12 hour layover in New Jersey, and just how much adventuring I could cram into some shorter layovers in Europe and Asia. It’s going to be an exciting trip! But it requires quite a bit of planning, and I have about a month and a half to make that all happen.

In the meantime, I’ve been slowly chipping away at the other items on my list, which recently included a trip to the North Shore, where I collected the stamps of 7 State Parks for my passport. Woof.

We began our trip with the goal of driving all the way to Grand Portage; from where I live, it’s about a 6 hour drive. We also were staying in Duluth, which is a nearly 3 hour drive from the park – so we had a lot of time on the road, and less time for exploring on the first day of our adventure.

Our first stop of the day was Cascade River State Park. It wasn’t too cold (said in Minnesotan accent), but we bundled up in down jackets, snow pants, and boots, anyway. It was a nice way to test out some of the gear/items I’d purchased for Everest.

It had just snowed, and the trees were beautiful – dark green and snow dusted.

We did quite a bit of hiking at this park – it was a really nice park for a winter hike. After going through a total withdrawal of State Parks and hiking this winter season, it felt incredibly good to get outside, breathe fresh air, and just explore.

This is pretty much exactly how I felt about getting outside again.

After getting in a nice little jaunt at Cascade River, we pushed forward toward Grand Portage, while taking a strategic pit stop in Grand Marais for lunch. We ate at Sven and Oles, and enjoyed their wild rice pizza.

To be honest, it was one of the best pizzas I’ve had in my entire life, and that’s really saying something.

After consuming an entire pizza and stack of garlic sticks, we set off once again, driving all the way to Grand Portage, which is right along the Canadian border.

I missed the turn and almost drove to Canada.

Grand Portage has an extremely nice visitor’s center, likely because it’s such a popular park. After getting our passport stamps, we immediately hopped on the trail to the waterfall.

The trail was awesome – lined with deep green pine trees, completely covered in snow, and very quiet all but for the sound of snow being packed down by our boots.

And the view when we got to the falls – utterly stunning.

You know how I feel about heights and waterfalls – this was basically like a dream come true. It was gorgeous. I’d love to come back in the summer or fall and see what it looks like then, as well!

I mean, look at it.

I can still hear the rumbling of the water pouring into an icy river.

We stayed here for quite some time, taking in the beauty of the waterfall, and hiking to every vantage point around it.

Eventually, we knew we needed to head back and embark on a 3 hour drive to Duluth, so we hiked back through thick layers of snow to the visitor’s center. Along the way to Duluth, we made a brief pit stop at Judge C.R. Magney State Park, one of my favorites in the state, to snag a stamp for our passport.

After arriving at our AirBNB in Duluth, we made a quick trip to Canal Park for dinner and a few drinks, before hitting the hay, exhausted after a long day of driving and hiking.

The next morning, however, we were up and at ’em.

We drove to The Vanilla Bean Restaurant in Two Harbors for breakfast, where I was dying to try the Scandinavian Breakfast, which sounds terrible for you but utterly delicious. Sadly, they were out of it – however, I’ll take any excuse I need to go back there. The food was incredible.

I’m hungry looking at that. I got the Castle Danger Hash, which included corned beef braised in Castle Danger Brewery beer. It was tender and phenomenal and my mouth is currently watering.

They also let me order a pancake on the side, and it was fluffy and soft and came with a side of vanilla bean butter.

Too full to reasonably expect ourselves to have a comfortable hike, we set off again.

Our first stop was Gooseberry Falls State Park, which also had a very nice visitor’s center. The park ranger there told me that if I had micro spikes, I’d probably want to break them out, since the stairs were pretty icy. The man did not lie.

Excited to test them out, I hooked my micro spikes up to my boots, and set off. They worked like a charm, and I was super stoked to be able to walk over the excessive number of icy patches on the route with ease. I was even happier when we came to the stairs.

They basically weren’t even stairs anymore, but rather a ramp that you could slide down. However, my micro spikes allowed me to walk right over them easily.

It was actually pretty fun walking across these stairs in my micro spikes.

We walked down to the falls, which were cool, but in no way in comparison with Grand Portage.

They were a little too snow-covered to enjoy. I’d like to come back in the summer to check out the view when there’s less snow. It was also a little disconcerting to see how far people were willing to walk out there – we tried walking only a short distance toward the falls, but quickly turned around when we saw holes in the ice.

We hiked around the park a bit, before taking to the road again. Our next stop: Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. This was one of my favorites, simply because we took a “wrong” turn again at the park, and ended up driving down to a cool landing area instead of making it to the lighthouse.

The sky had this cool orange-pink color at the horizon line, which reflected golden onto Lake Superior’s waves. It was hypnotizing to watch the colors flash over the blue waves. The rocks on the little island were dripping with ice, and totally covered with snow and pines. It was beautiful.

After taking approximately 1 billion photos, we drove up to the lighthouse, which was sadly closed for the season.

We walked up the steps to take a look at Superior from the little viewing deck, and even though it was a bit grey, it did not disappoint.

From there, we drove to my favorite park of the entire trip: Temperance River State Park.

First of all, the gorge and the bridge were stunning.

Secondly, the minute we began hiking down the bridge over the gorge, the sun emerged after hiding behind grey skies for most of our trip.

It was stunning. Temperance River State Park has become one of my favorite parks in the entire state.

I made a short video about my weekend trip, and the most beautiful footage in it by far is captured from this park.

Check out the video below!

We hiked down to a little beach, where rocks were covered in slick ice from Lake Superior’s waves.

It was exciting to finally see blue skies, and to watch the spray of water as waves crashed into the giant rocks.

We wrapped up our adventure by hitting the last and seventh park on our list: George Crosby Manitou State Park.

I’m not going to lie, we kind of neglected this park. We didn’t do a lot of hiking here, but we did run around in the snow for a bit. We had a little dance break outside of my car, and my aunt totally wiped out in the parking lot and began making snow angels. We didn’t go far into the park, but we had a lot of fun there.

The snow was piled crazily high in the parking lot, which clearly demanded that we take dramatic photos of ourselves on top of the small mountains.

That’s a woman who’s ready to hike to Mount Everest.

It was an extremely successful trip, and got me 7 parks closer to my goal of reaching every State Park in Minnesota. It was great to get outdoors, breathe in some fresh air, and feel a little more free out in the open, even if it was a bit chilly.