Grand Marais Day Trip

   I have been truly neglecting my blogger duties, I apologize again to the few followers I may have but it has been a pretty big whirlwind of a week and a half in my life... more on that in upcoming days.
   Since my life has been chaos I decided to just leave it all yesterday. The plan when I started out yesterday was to go sailing with my Ginger friend, Eric. When he came to pick me up he asked if I would be opposed to making the two hour trip up the Northshore to a small fishing and artists community nestled in the middle of no where called Grand Marais. If you have never been I highly recommend it! It's just so darn beautiful.
   I first stumbled upon Grand Marais a few years ago when I was living with a good childhood friend, Anne. She and I had moved to Duluth together when we were 18. This town has always been an escape for me, that day it just so happened that it was hotter than hell in Duluth, a city where no one has air conditioning. Rather than sitting around our house sweating like whores in church, as my mother would say, we decided to drive until we stopped sweating... yeah, thank god that happened before we made it to Canada. When we got there we stumbled upon this little restaurant on the side of Highway 61.

The excitement before the let down.

   If you should know anything about Anne and I, we are OBSESSED with Mexican food. This retaurant was advertising what they called "Puff Tacos", ummm ok? Forgoing the usual tourist stop to Sven and Ole's Pizza, we decided to try Hughie's Tacos out. ERRRRRMAGEERRRD... Deep fried doughy taco shell stacked to Jesus with taco fixings. I had died and gone to heaven.
  The next year I had introduced Eric to these little slices of heaven and yesterday we were on a mission to put them in our bellies. I am not going to lie, I had way too much fun over the past weekend and may have been trying to recover my shoving my face full of anything that had grease (clearly, I fell off the healthy wagon). Deep fried taco? YEP! For two hours of scenic driving and catching up, Eric and I obsessed about the greatness that we were about to encounter. Seriously, OBSESSED.  We arrived to town ready to gorge ourselves, spotted the building, parked a block away, and pretty much ran like kids on Christmas morning towards the place.
   As we got to the door I heard Eric utter, "uh oh".
   "Don't you dare tell me this place is closed Gingerbread!" I cried.

The view from our table. Oops, that beer got in the way.

   Yeah, two hours later we come to know that Hughie's Tacos is NOT open Sunday and Monday per summer hours. Son of a biscuit. My life was over (I know dramatic right?). We walked away from the building, heads hung low and headed towards "The World's Best Doughnuts", or so they claim, which only had bagels left. Womp, Womp. So I sat my rear down on the curb and busted out the trusty iPhone and looked up restaurants in the area. I wanted something more than mediocre pizza with a funny Northern Minnesota name and was delighted when I found a place I remembered people talking about before: The Angry Trout Cafe. This place was awesome, a cute little place with outdoor seating that had a dock you can park your boat at. I could see the bottom of the lake from where I was sitting, it was pretty sweet.

   Honestly though, as cool as the scenery and sunshine was it had NOTHING on the food we ate. For an appetizer we ordered the Artichoke and Spinach Cheese Bread, a perfect mixture of the three first ingredients with some herbs baked on top of perfect little baguette like crostinis and these bitches were served with fresh fruit on the side and violets to garnish, which was unexpectedly refreshing. For our main courses Eric got their fish and chips which was great, but I am not a huge fried fish person, he liked it though. My dish however was about as close to heaven as seafood can get, Smoked Trout Fettuccine. One thing I forgot to mention about this place is they are all about sustainability and local produce, everything is made from scratch, the fish are caught nearby in that big ol' lake, even their napkins are special eco-friendly canvas or something like that. So my dish had locally caught Lake Trout smoked to perfection tossed with homemade spinach fettucine, tomatoes, and olive oil and herbs and then topped with melted parmesan and crushed up hazelnuts. I die. Served with it was the best damn looking salad I have ever eaten, grilled zucchini, fresh cucumber, tomato, strawberries, watermelon, beets and a homemade Maple Mustard dressing. It was so good.

Eric's new chair for his sailboat.

   After I returned from heaven we walked around downtown Grand Marais for a bit. We visited a really cool outfitting store called Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply. This place was really cool, basically everything you would ever need to have a Northern Minnesota adventure, plus they have rentals and guided tours. They do paddling in both the BWCA and Lake Superior, fishing trips, and rock climbing and ice climbing trips. Seriously, add that job to my list of dream jobs along with flight nurse and retaurant owner. I would love to be able to go up there again and be able to use them for a kayak tour or something.
   Once Eric and I stopped drooling at the equipment, we headed towards Artist's point which is the perfect photo opportunity for any visitor or native. You can walk out on the lighthouse's point and see some pretty breath taking views of the Lake and the shoreline.
  With that being said, I will leave you loyal readers with some pictures to make you a little jealous. That whole half marathon I was psyching everyone up for and then left folks hanging? No worries, I am planning on sharing how I killed that beast tomorrow. Ciao friends!

They are pretty concerned about pedestrians.

The necessary North MN tourist photo stop.