Hiking the Pincushion Trail - Actifit: September 23 2019

It was day 2 of my fall get-away with the girls in Grand Marais, a lakeside town in Northern Minnesota, just 40 miles from the Canada border on the shore of Lake Superior.

It was a great day for steps. We had a really nice hike on a portion of the Gunflint Trail called the Pincushion and walked all over town and out to the lighthouse. Enjoy my photo essay!

The hike we chose was a medium difficulty trail that had several side attractions. For example, you could get to some falls by walking a half mile down an off-shoot trail. All told, we believe it was about five miles but I neglected to check my Fitbit when I got back to the car for our distance.

The scenery was spectacular.

We had fun photographing the many different types of mushrooms we saw along the trail.

Finally we hiked out to the scenic overlook.

The expansive views were amazing, with Lake Superior to the east, as far as the eye can see. And to the west, a sea of trees, getting ready to launch into full fall color.

That was it for our hike. We finished the loop and returned to our car, ready to head into town for some lunch. In the parking lot we met a couple who has been backpacking for about a week, and their final destination was Duluth, another 110 miles!

We had a nice lunch at a little roadside diner in Grand Marais. Over lunch I read the girls some interesting facts about Lake Superior from this online article.

For example, the surface area of the lake is 31,700 square miles (82,100 square kilometers), making it the largest lake in the world by surface area.

It holds as much water as all of the other Great Lakes combined, plus two more Lake Eries!

After lunch we enjoyed the shops and strolling around town. The girls have sad faces in this picture because the donut shop was closed and won’t be open tomorrow when we leave for home.

We went back to our room for naps and then in the evening we took a walk out to the lighthouse. We had walked out the night before, as I wrote in yesterday’s post, but got too dark on the way on our first attempt, and I got splashed by a big wave!

Today it was perfect. Gorgeous weather and plenty of daylight left.

Our last stop of the day was Sven and Ole’s for pizza. What a great day!

Thank you so much for visiting!

Here's my code for the Steemitworldmap: [//]:# (!steemitworldmap 47.793645 lat -90.321215 long Hiking the Pincushion portion of the Gunflint Trail d3scr)

Photowalking,Walking