Navigating da' North shore: Grand Marais to Two Harbors

Through the next week we would essentially take a fly-by tour of Minnesota’s notorious north shore. Learning that state parks are indeed a paddler’s safe haven due to the spacing of the sometimes-apparent primitive sites on the water trail. We would gain additional support of human presence tooling by highway 61, increased housing and towns that began to grow in population.

Those concrete jungle-esque formations aside (we denote formations because the towns there are small, but when you’ve been out a rambling for many months in the company of one generally a small town suddenly seems BIG) the north shore does contain some of the sweetest rivers a day’s paddle you could wish for. If these rambunctious waters ran year round it would certainly be a Mecca for those short boats (see post from November 4, 2008). Paddling by them via the lake route roused pangs of longing for some river running experience, but to no avail the weather didn’t produce days of rainfall to raise the mighty waters. Regardless they were appreciated nonetheless, watered or not.

Reflecting back on the North Shore, it seemed like a slight blurr, due to the travels, boondoggles and ensuing adventure perhaps this is why:

Leave Grand Marais, paddle to Cascade River State Park. Appreciate the close proximity to G town. Awe in wonder over the geological immensity of the shoreline. Arrive near large retaining wall and cobbled beach. Stash boats in an undisclosed location, shuttle gear and bodies into campground.


Depart Cascade River State Park paddle towards Temperance River State Park. WOW there are some HOUSES on the shore. Lay over at Lutsen for some lunch. See a short boat on a car, have strong desire to follow the flow to some moving water; break daydream, climb back into boats, hammer remaining miles to Temperance River. Fail to fight urge and paddle up the mouth of the river. Sweet rock formations enwalled in last little part of canyon. Paddle back out to beach, scope campsite. Find primitive cart-in site, get back in boats, paddle down to beach closer to campsite, and haul the goods up the bluff… Sleep

Watch burly waves crash into beach next morning. Figure we’ve gotta be making ground Set out towards Baptism. Unable to find primitive campsite (back up plan) as weather was getting a little rowdy. End up finding primitive campsite, which was totally exposed to wind and waves, entry move was timing land on sheer rock between sets of 3-4ft breakers. This type of landing probably would have eaten one of our boats. We hem and haw about camping on private property, in the end move on. Paddle, paddle, paddle a little more to State Natural Area-, which denotes ‘no camping’. Work out some deal with Naturalist of sort (this part, by the way could totally be hypothetical depending on who reads it) to stash boats in undisclosed location. Boats safe, cool. Reconvene with the Mom unit and seek shelter with some local Inn- they rent us a little house and we spend the night indoors out of the NASTY thunder storms.

Next day, attempt to paddle from this undisclosed hypothetical location, which may or may not be 14 miles from the Baptism River. Solid. Ok, so we haul all the gear down to the boats. The lake is ROWDY. South westerly ripping down the shore at 15+ knots. Darn. We debate. There is no place to land between this safe haven and the Baptism. Bag paddling that day due to wind. Haul all the gear back up to the car and head towards the baptism to camp. In ranger station meet some lady who is a business partner to the woman who wrote Deep Water Passage. Small world. Friends from the North Country arrive later that evening and we generate a plan for tomorrow’s paddle.

Wake early the next day. Break camp, load gear, head back to boats. Not thinking clearly we load the boats, realizing this could have been the SECOND time we could have paddled empty boats. (First time was when we paddled into Ontonagon for our food box). BLAST- missed opportunity. Anyway, we loaded the boats up and set out to paddle a delectable stretch of shoreline. Wind building slightly, no big deal. Witness the mighty Manitou Falls, a great blue Heron and continue along the shore. WILD big houses and really no where to get out. We get met by our friends near the Baptism and head into the river for lunch on a very unique sand bar. Fueled up and ready to go again, we paddled out into the lake towards Palisade head. WOW. BIG BIG ROCK. Little exploration in some sea caves/ stacks and keep on headed west down the shore to Split Rock State Park. There is an infamous lighthouse here. Definitely cool. Attack the landing rigmarole and load our gear into a cart for the cart-in campsite. Ahh home for the evening. Set up camp and head out to shuttle vehicles. Couldn’t help notice that there was a sweet restaurant between the campground and location of friends’ vehicle. Delicious food. Back to camp for sleep.

Fairly decent morning next day. Got quite close to a grouse in camp, exploded into the sky right in front of me. COOL. We make breakfast, break camp and then cart our goods back down to the boats. Load on up and kick off towards Two Harbors Minnesota. Great paddle. Lot of houses and sketchy shore line. The colors had begun to show a bit more of themselves and the presence of higher population became much more apparent. We stop on some island about six or eight miles out of two harbors and gain wind of heavy storm system moving toward our present location. Bummer. So we huff, and we puff and we blew the miles behind us. Arrived in Two Harbors Campground to find the last campsite had just been taken, (by my Mother) and began our daily ritual of unpacking, hauling boats and setting up camp. Knowing the weather was going to boost it up later, we set a solid camp and did the only responsible thing we could think of: go into town for pizza - way safer than cooking outside in a lightning storm. We then took advantage of a laundry mat w/ internets to clean our clothes for the first time in (mumbled) days. It rained, poured and kept the folks at the National Weather Service busy. The sound of thunder in the distance and patter of the rain eventually brought soothing closure to an event filled day.