July 19, 2012

We left the casino this morning and drove east toward Grand Marais.  We got a camping site at 12 Mile Beach campground about 15 miles before Grand Marais.  We arrived around 10:00 and there were only 4 spaces empty.  We backed into one and then walked down the road to check the other ones out.  The space we stopped at was in a no generator area.  We found another one where a couple was packing up to leave.  We talked to them and got their site when they left about 20 minutes later.  This site is on the Lake Superior side of the campground.  It goes to a sand dune cliff edge and then down to 12 Mile Beach.  There is a trail to take you down to the beach.

There are a lot of low bush blueberry plants at camp and Jim and I picked some.  After unhooking we drove through the east end of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  We stopped at the visitor center and got their telephone number.  We don’t have cell service in the campground and I needed a way for Elton to get in touch with us if he needed to.  We took a short hike to Sable Falls.  This waterfall was one with 164 steps to go down and then back up again.  At the same trailhead but in the other direction we took a hike to Grand Sable Dunes.  After the hike went drove into Grand Marais and had a beer at Lake Superior Brewing.  We walked out to the Grand Marais light which was at the end of a jetty.  From here we could see the Au Sable lighthouse in the distance.  We went to the grocery store and  Jim bought some New York strip steaks for dinner tonight.

On the way back to camp we stopped at Log Slide Overlook.  This is a tall sand dune where loggers built a wooden slide to send their logs down to the water’s edge of Lake Superior for loading on ships. You can go down the side of the dune to the beach in a few minutes but it takes about an hour to climb back up.  We didn’t do it.  We sat outside after returning to camp.  Jim grilled steaks and I fixed a salad with the blueberries.  When the sun started to set, we took our chairs to the edge of the sand dune cliff and watched.  The sun set at 9:40 pm.  We went into the Casita and played Phase 10 and read our books until time to go to sleep.