Late post.

I wrote this post on Sunday, hoping to post it sooner, but we've been without internet, so since I wrote it we have cracked on a bit and we're now south of Detroit on the way to South Carolina with lumber from Toronto.

It's always nice to find small town USA, where the pace is laid back and the people seem more friendly, and Grand Marais ticked those boxes whilst we had a relaxing break there due to being unable to run our oversize load into Canada on a weekend.

Cath feeling the chill in front of the frozen bay.

On Friday night we had a wings and pizza supper at Sven and Oles and a couple of beers in the Pickled Herring bar.

We did try another bar, but the food was aimed at the hippy clientele, ie tofu and wild rice style concoctions, they also were charging $9 a glass for wine, which, although I don't drink wine much, gives an indication of the other prices for beer etc, and being a tight Yorkshireman, it was more than my delicate disposition could take, so we had a quick beer and moved on.
Saturday night we went back to Sven and Oles and had another good value, tasty, filling supper, and a couple more beers, but not the 'Blue Moon' beer which I tried the night before, which was served with a slice of orange, and according to Cath smelled like rotten veg.

We had wandered around the lake front on Friday, taking pictures in a bitter wind, but when we went back down on Saturday morning we were surprised to see that half the bay had frozen over during the night. It was also a nice blue sky on Saturday, so the pictures didn't look like black and white shots.

We had booked a room for two nights in one of the local hotels which was warm, clean and very comfortable, with nice staff, and our only disapointment was the 'fuel surcharge' scam, which is, what it is, a scam!

The bill for the room was as we had agreed when we checked in, but apart from the tax (which is always added) there were two other charges, one for the use of the amenities, and one for the fuel surcharge.

There was an explanation at the foot of the bill, which says it was a 'compromise' to avoid increasing their room rates, which is clearly ridiculous, so I told them I wasn't willing to pay either of the extra charges as they had never been mentioned at the time of checking in.

The extra cost was only $4.50 total for the two nights but, it wasn't the principle, it was the money!

We returned to the rest area near the border for Sunday night, and took the half mile walk up to the very impressive 'High Falls'.

High Falls waterfall near Grand Portage on the US Canadian border.

Much better in real life!

If we get this way again in summer we would definately try and make time for a stop here in this stunning area of Highway 61 Minnesota.