Pregnant Camping

It's almost summertime, and the weather is beautiful -- so Bryan & I decided to head to Northern Minnesota for a couple days for a "babymoon," or a last vacation/quiet time as a couple. We went to Two Harbors and points north along the shore of Lake Superior.

We planned to go camping and spend a couple nights in Gooseberry Falls State Park. The park is wooded, remote, and lovely, and it's pretty quiet mid-week before High Season hits. (See 1st picture.)

We grilled out for dinner, and instead of pitching a tent we crawled into our nice van to sleep on the air mattress (2nd picture). One night on the air mattress made both of us change our minds about camping. Air mattresses are uncomfortable when you aren't pregnant, and when you are, well, they're brutal. I felt like I'd been beaten with a soup can when I crawled out of bed in the morning.

In the morning we had breakfast of campfire pancakes, bacon, n' eggs and then took a short nature walk, where we met a couple small, bold rodents (3rd picture). I can't figure out what those are -- are they baby prairie dogs? Some sort of ground squirrels? I've never seen this combination of grey head/tail and beige striped body before.

After leaving Gooseberry Falls, we headed north a few miles to Split Rock Lighthouse where Bryan caught a picture of a Sea Monster terrorizing the lighthouse and its group of visitors (4th picture). This is a very user-friendly park with many trails that even the old, infirm, and pregnant can navigate. (However, we were too cheap to pay $8/each to get into the lighthouse for the 100th anniversary tour; instead, we appreciated it in an exterior sort of way.)

Then we headed south again, back to Gooseberry Falls for more hiking. We were scolded by a red squirrel (5th picture) for being on its trail,

Bryan nearly fell into the falls (6th picture), and Blinker enjoyed the hike (7th picture).

After all this, we headed back to Two Harbors and stayed at the Country Inn, which used to be a chain hotel but is now independent. I highly recommend this hotel; it's clean, affordable, friendly, offers a pretty great continental breakfast, has a pool and whirlpool ... AND has complimentary mini-golf! The bed and shower both felt good after the air mattress and campfire smoke.

The next morning, we poked around Two Harbors, had yummy lunch at the Vanilla Bean, and headed back to the Cities. The babymoon was great. We'll do some more day hikes around town if Blinker lets us before he officially arrives.