friday - september twenty-two, two thousand - 9:35am
...so then on monday, my folk's flight was at 11am... we were checking the weather channel all morning because they were having some nasty weather down in the florida/south carolina area. we were thinking their flight might be delayed. but, it wasn't and we sent them off on time. then we ran back home and packed our bags and took off for the north shore. the drive was delightful... we thought it was going to rain, but it turned sunny. we stopped about half way at a place called moose lake and ate at a restaurant called the wyntree. really yummy, down-home cookin' - i had meatloaf. it was really nice having my appetite back! they had a giftshop attached with some really cute stuff. i bought a miniature canoe with all the paddles and gear inside. it was really cute.
we arrived in lutsen around 4pm. we stayed at the resort - they had these things called sea villas that have full kitchens, fireplaces, and a deck. they're only about 20 feet from the shore. you can hear the water lapping against the shoreline all night long... it just lulls you to sleep. the leaves hadn't changed color quite as much as i had hoped, but it was still unbelievably beautiful up there.
the first night we ran to the liquor and general stores to get some necessities. we bought "l.a. confidential" because neither one of us had seen it, and i'd heard great things about it. so we spent the night in - and it was cozy and wonderful... except for one bummer - we couldn't get a fire going. the wood they supplied us with was really hard to get going, it just turned black and never really started burning.... i don't know enough about starting fires to figure out what went wrong.
the next day we slept in, of course.... and got rolling around 1 or 2. we went over to the main lodge where they had a free 3 par golf course for their guests. paul brought his clubs, so we played it. i don't have much expereince with golf, so it was nice, because even though it was a crappy course, i didn't have to worry about holding anybody up because we were the only ones there! it was a lot of fun - paul showed me some pointers, and i didn't do too badly. afterwards we went inside and played ping-pong in their game room while we waited for the pub to open. then we sat at the bar and had a drink, and ordered the best damn chicken drummies ever to tide us over until dinner. after that we went walking along some of their trails and discovered this really gorgeous waterfall area on the rocks - plus, their was this old abandoned building with some kind of weird machinery and equipment in it that was kind of hard to get to - but we managed to climb over to it and get a closer look.
we'd made 7 o'clock reservations at the main lodge for dinner. we'd heard it was spectacular. we'd also requested a lake-side window seat.... which they only half accomodated. i was by the window, and paul was by a wall - it was kind of annoying. the food was a little disapointing - probably just because we had been told by the #1 food snob at work that it was next to heavenly - and we'd had better recently. and the prices were really sky-high. but, we still had a nice evening together. we walked down to the beach afterwards and looked at the stars. i've never seen so many stars - you could see the milky way plain as day. i tried to take a picture, but it didn't show up.
when we got back to our villa we decided to take a swim - the pool and whirlpool was open for another hour. we were the only ones over there - it was nice.
wednesday came too soon. we packed up and headed out around 11:00. paul wanted to stop at an agate store on the way. he bought a set of bookends that are really cool. they're a really bright blue inside the rock. we had intended to stop in duluth for lunch, and possibly go to the aquarium they have - but we were both kind of tired, and i was incredibly sore from playing golf the previous day. - i didn't know you could get so sore from that! so, we just went straight home. it was a relaxing getaway. i really enjoyed myself. i reccommend the north shore to anyone looking to get away for a long weekend. there's a lot of stuff to do, if you're into actvtes, or you can just take it easy and enjoy the beauty, like we did.
