Dearly Beloved...

...We have gathered here today to get through this thing called life.

Okay, the Prince quote will make sense at the end of the blog.  I'm sitting at the airport with nothing to do, so I figured I might as well blog about the rest of the trip.  So here it goes...

Our last morning in Voyageurs was spent kayaking on Lake Kabetogama.  We rented a tandem kayak from Northern Lights Resort and we had big plans of kayaking to the Rock Garden, which is a 4-mile kayak ride one-way.  As soon as we saw the water, we knew that wasn't going to happen at all.  It wasn't as windy as the day before, but it was still breezy.  When we got on the water, it was a tough workout.  We spent an hour in the little bay we were in and then called that done.  If you want to see Voyageurs from the water, wait for the National Park tour boats to start up - it's a lot easier that way!  We were one week too early for that.  We kept the day pretty easy after that because we had a long drive to Grand Marais where we were staying for the night.

Kayaking in Lake Kabetogama

Me constantly looking for Bald Eagles - Steve wasn't too mad about my lack of paddling.  ;-)

This needs to go viral.

The next day, we drove to Grand Portage National Monument.  This was a very well-done park!  They had to rebuild the Great Hall because it burned down at one point.  But with the new building, they've transformed it into a really cool museum about the fur trade and what it would have been like at Grand Portage in the 1800's.  Another fun fact about this park is that on a clear day, you can see Isle Royale across Lake Superior.  Had I known that it would have been a shorter (and likely more calm) boat ride from Grand Portage, I probably would have skipped the boat ride we took a few years ago from Michigan since everyone on that boat ride got sick!  We spoke with a couple people at Voyageurs who had been to Isle Royale and they all had similar stories about the lake not being very friendly.

In between the two land masses is an island in the distance - that would be Isle Royale NP

Great Hall at Grand Portage NM

After we finished up at Grand Portage National Monument, we went to Grand Portage State Park which had a pretty quick hike to High Falls - the tallest in Minnesota.  We were pretty impressed with the falls!  They are 100 - 130 feet tall - for some reason they weren't sure exactly how tall.  We continued with more hiking in a different state park to see Cascade Falls and Devil's Kettle.  Devil's Kettle is another waterfall that sits higher than Cascade, and 1/2 of the flow disappears - no one knows where it goes!  This is a pretty steep hike, about a mile one-way, and includes 176 steps.

High Falls

Devil's Kettle

Cascade Falls

Our last park was Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.  We did the Grand Tour on the boat which takes you out to Devil's Island (if Lake Superior and the weather cooperate, which it did) and back.  The narration includes fun facts about each of the islands you see on the tour.  The highlight, in my opinion, was Devil's Island - that's where some of the sea caves were and it just provided some fun scenery to look at.

Boat selfie - it was chilly!

Bald Eagle!

Devil's Island Lighthouse and some of the sea caves (the one on the left looks like a skull to me).

More of Devil's Island

Raspberry Island lighthouse

Today was our last day of vacation and since we had to get to the airport, we only had time to grab a quick tour of Paisley Park which is where Prince's recording studio is (and at one point he lived there).  Now the title of the blog should make sense!  Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside, but this was a pretty neat tour.  I expected a lot more purple, but surprisingly there was only a tasteful amount.  We did the cheapest tour, but there is a VIP option which will show you more rooms.  We saw the atrium, Prince's office, rooms dedicated to specific albums/movies, a couple recording studios, and the soundstage.  And that's a wrap for this trip!

Paisley Park