Walk With Me 7: Gooseberry Falls!
Two Harbors and the land surrounding it is the home of my heart. Such a calm, quiet town teeming with natural life.
Yesterday we made a visit to one of the most well known and beautiful places in the area. What better place to do a #walkwithme than Gooseberry Falls?!
There are three tiers of falls.
These are the Upper Falls, frozen and glorious.
Close to the Upper Falls are a pair of small caves, carved out when the river bed was a bit higher. They're perfect for the small folks in your life who just want to dab.
A view from on top of the Middle Falls. Have you ever walked on top of a frozen waterfall?
My trio next to the Middle Falls.
The Middle Falls.
Another tiny cave carved out way up high by the Gooseberry River ages ago.
When you walk across the ice, it's important to remember there is a river rushing inches beneath your feet.
View of the Middle Falls from atop the Lower Falls.
Neat rock wall with a hole carved through it.
A few of the stairs we took down. Some were completely covered in ice and we needed to keep death grips on the railing while struggling for purchase. Willow fell pretty hard at one point. This is one of the few places left where people are expected to look after themselves. The park is not responsible for injuries, you hike at your own risk. So use some common sense.
The Lower Falls. Some of the water has broken through the wall of ice and snow. Very pretty!
The trees have built up some gorgeous root systems to survive flooding, red clay soil and rocks.
A man made this cute little guy. He said it was because he was bored. How can you be surrounded by such beautiful sights and be bored?? #NatureIsMyReligion
Sparrow and one of her cousins, enjoying the day. 💜
Willow had a tough time. She fell several times, the injury she got last Saturday is still bothering her. And she got cold so I gave her my jacket. Hard day on my little one!
Birch Trees on the way back.
Last stop was the #InterprativeCenter where we warmed up by the fire.
Such a great walk for us, we used to live only 3 miles from the Falls, so this was a very nostalgic trip!
Thank you for joining us on our frozen #waterfalls walk! 💜
Beautiful walk! I am sorry about Willow's injury <3 I hope she feels better soon xo
That was a very good walk. Although This is a good time of the year for you and others in the cooler climate but It's tough to go out in Snow for a walk.
Nice Photography By the way!
Thank you!
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@bonniehere
Very cool trip down memory lane. Thanks for sharing.
Those stairs doesn't look much dangerous compared to the stairs from the bus stop down to my harbour :-)
I shared only the most astetically pleasing part of the stairs. Lolol
This irks me quite much sometimes. We've got so many rules and regulations here in Norway and the European Union ... people are supposed to be safe, no matter what ... but in the end of the day, people are supposed to look after themselves, and it's impossible to enjoy life without taking risks.
I suppose things are quite different here compared with the US. For instance, I believe it's still allowed to drive without using a seat belt in the US ... that's quite strict in Norway, always buckle up or one may get a hefty fine (in residential areas, that just doesn't make sense - the pedestrians outside the car is much less safe than the people inside the car, and car drivers tend to feel safer and drive faster when they are buckled up). Another example, there was newly some regulation passed making it a punishable offence to be in a dhingy or small boat without using a life west. I'm quite much against that one, it just doesn't make sense (no statistical evidence that even a single life will be saved by such a regulation, police has better things to do, there are lots of situations when it's impracticable with a life west - for instance, children bathing from the boat, should they remove the life west in mid-air while jumping?).
Contrary to the situation in the US, we don't have a tradition of taking things to court when getting injured. My wife once got kicked by a horse while she was out in the traffic biking, she was immobilized for a week or so. She asked if there would be any chance to get some compensation, like at least cover the medical bill and some of the taxi expenses ... but the horse center just laughed it off. Exceptions apply, I believe there was a court case where a child climbed over a fence and then climbed up a high-voltage mast and died from electric shock ... I find it quite surprising. Property owners in urban areas can also be held liable if someone falls on the sidewalk, or gets killed by falling ice from the roofs.
Sometimes it's needed to walk a kilometer just to be able to cross the train line. In the end of the day, I believe the heavy fencing is more to protect the rail services than the people needing to cross the train line. After all, if a person dies from sliding in the stairs on the overpass, that will not be counted in the statistics as a "train accident".
Many playgrounds have been removed because they didn't satisfy the EU regulations for what is considered a safe playground. That also irks me - children should be allowed to play, and regulations doesn't really help - the playgrounds can still be very much dangerous when the soft sand protecting falling children from head injuries is frozen solid.
Yes, it is law to wear seat belts in the US. You'd get a hefty fine here in Minnesota for choosing not to.
Children under a certain age must wear life vests on boats, and every person on the boat must have one within arms reach.
People will get tickets for not wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle, robbers can make a lawsuit if injured while in their victim's home...
It's ridiculous.
Oh well, my stereotypical impression of the US is that such laws are considered an attack on personal freedom, and hence that there is no such regulation - and that the airbag invention was designed specifically to save "lazy unbuckled American lives".
Checking wikipedia I see that it's left to the states to regulate seat belt usage and that most states have laws in place by now.
In Norway we've had mandatory seat belt usage from 1979, but in the beginning there were quite some exceptions. I remember my granny had a paper from the doctor stating that she shouldn't wear a seat belt for health reasons. (She got cancer, the doctor said she had one year left of living when she got diagnosed around 1967. She refused to accept such a "death sentence", and lived on for 17 more years).
There were quite some political disagreements before the law passed, as always the politicians to the right cares about personal freedom, while the politicians to the left considers restrictions on personal freedom as an acceptable cost if i(they believe) it's good for the society as such.
Today it's totally uncontroversial, there is universal agreement that it's a good thing, even though the political balanse has shifted quite much towards the right over the years.
The law only stated that suitable life vests for all persons onboard the boat/ship should be available here in Norway until recently, and "think of the children" was one of the arguments used in the debate, we could have ended up with mandatory life west usage for children, only.
I consider that to be a terrible law.
It is quite obvious that the helmet is a very good thing to have on the head if a biker is falling with the head first into the ground, or getting rammed by a car in such a way that the head hits the car or the ground. I know of two cases over the last laws, girlfriend of my boss at work had an accident, the helmet got completely broken but she got fine through the accident. Then there was an Estonian trick-biker that attempted biking down some stairs here in Oslo - without a helmet - it didn't go completely as planned, he fell with his head first and died instantly. (It was categorized as a "traffic incident", due to that accident, statistically the Oslo traffic was 25% more dangerous that year. The fatality rate for that year was even used as an argument to curb car traffic in Oslo, even if only one out of five fatalities was related to car traffic).
Anyway ... enforced helmet laws may discourage cycling, and there is little or no evidence that they decrease the amount of head injuries.
Here in Norway helmet usage is on the steady rise, and the social pressure for wearing a helmet and putting a helmet on the kids is also quite high nowadays. That's probably a good thing.