Sunday, March 15, 2009

"Lake Superior Split!" - Grand Marais, MN

The rest of weekend we spent in Grand Marais. It is a very small town. If anyone saw the moving "New in Town" it was pretty much like that town. I think the sign said it has a population of 1,500. I have to wonder if that doubles during the summer because it was pretty much a ghost town. There were several restaurants and stores we were interested in that were closed for the winter months. 

One place that was open was Sven & Ole's Pizza. Everyone that we told that we were heading to Grand Marais said we had to eat there because they have the best pizza. We did have lunch there on Friday and everyone was right. It was great pizza. Alex and I did get to thinking that it was pretty much the only place to get pizza in town. So there isn't much to compare the pizza against. There were no Papa John's or Donato's. In fact there were no fast food restaurants with the exception of Subway. Either way it was really good pizza.


After lunch we headed over to Artist's Point. It is a small island that is connected to the shore by dirt and rocks. (I read that in a menu.) We had a great view from our hotel. The hotel we stayed in was right on Lake Superior. We were fascinated by the lake in its frozen state. I felt like I was in Alaska.


It was very cold on our walk out to Artist's Point. The wind was really kicking up and it made it difficult to see where you were walking on the rocks. There were definitely points where I think I was actually standing on the frozen lake. 


Probably one of the most memorable things that we saw over the weekend was watching Lake Superior split. Since the wind was blowing pretty hard it was able to move incredibly large sheets of ice and push them into other sheets where it actually crumbled into large shards of ice. Alex and I were walking back and heard a loud crack. We turned to see the ice moving and breaking. It sounded like glass shattering. The mounds of ice probably grew to at least 6 feet high as we watched. People in town said it can get up to 12 feet high. I thought that it looked like Superman's house. (I wish my camera was working so I could have made a video.)


Alex was able to get a lot of great shots around town. He found snow covered canoes which obviously were not being used and for good reason.


Each morning we were able to catch the sunrise and sunset outside our hotel window. It was absolutely beautiful. I love the reflection of the sun on the ice. Minnesota is full of beautiful scenery.


2 comments:

Kristan said...

The lake cracking sounds AWESOME! That's something I want to see.

Mattie said...

That's amazing!