The drive to Lake Minnetonka from Duluth is a nice short drive. As we got closer to the lake we were totally blown away by the homes around here. While some people live here year round, a great many of the houses are vacation places. The CEO’s of Target, General Mills, and the many huge corporations based in the twin cities have homes here…..There are mansions you wouldn’t believe, many far nicer than the Hamptons.  There is 125 miles of shoreline. On a lake!

We got to our friend, (Hideout) Steve’s house on Thursday afternoon. He has this great old house that his parents purchased in 1959. It was originally built in 1908 to house ladies of the evening, so there are many rooms…. He is updating this house room by room, and it is a labor of love. It is a big two story house with a full basement and attic, right on the lake with over 130 ft. of shoreline, complete with a dock and a pretty red boat (to match his pretty red truck). He gave us the grand tour and showed us his many projects. It is great to see what he is doing here and we can’t wait to see how it looks when he finishes it. It is a big project, but he is clearly enjoying the journey!

The first thing we did after settling in, was to go to the grocery store and get all the stuff for me to make a big German dinner. Bratwurst, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and French bread, then we played some cards-till after 1:00 a.m. So much for making a healthy meal-oh well, it seemed right at the time. We introduced Steve to Phase 10, a game my friend Carol introduced us to. He proceeded to beat us.

In the morning we woke to the smell of coffee and bacon-best thing ever to wake up to-along with blueberry pancakes and eggs. We then got our stuff together for a day on the lake. This lake is over 14,500 acres. We wandered in and out of coves and under bridges and through channels and explored it for hours with several swimming stops before going out to lunch where you pull your boat in to a slip at a restaurant dock and dine on the terrace. Pretty incredible place! I feel very lucky to have experienced this! We got home around 6 p.m., cleaned up, rested a minute then went out to see some live music at the local watering hole. There was this band called “Coyote Wild” that was the strangest mixture of people, but some pretty great country music (there was a time I may have considered that to be an impossible combination-pretty great and country music!). The two female singers were totally gorgeous with amazing voices, but the men, as Steve put it were “an old guy on the keyboard, Duck Dynasty on the bass, the guitarist looks like a trucker and a skinhead on drums (not to mention the other guitarist looked like Jonny Depp goes rastifarian). Fun evening….

On Saturday we headed to the University of Minnesota Arboretum. It was a beautiful place with a 3 mile loop walking tour of the many gardens and a maze. A glass artist, Craig Mitchell Smith has 32 glass sculptures installed all over the park. I may have gone overboard in photographing them, but I will whittle them down to just a few for posting purposes.

We decided to head out on Sunday morning, because we find 3 days to be just about the perfect time for a stop. Too long and it’s hard to get moving again. But on the last night, one more home cooked meal here. Rick made his famous fried chicken dinner-I made the salad. After this stop-we are heading towards Mt. Rushmore. Not looking forward to the find a hotel drill again……We are starting to wind this trip down. But still having fun!

Duluth. Not a pretty sounding place. But it really is. Duluth was never even close to being on the radar. And had it been easier to find a place in the U.P., we probably never would have made it there, but here we are. The hotel is lovely and the location is wonderful. Right downtown. It sits on a beautiful bay and there is a Lakewalk that goes on for a really long way. It has a boardwalk, a bike path, and even a path for horse drawn carriages. We immediately took a long walk on the Lakewalk and went out to dinner, then wandered back through the downtown area. Halfway there, we saw these big lights, and there, in the middle of downtown was a Casino. Nice. We may have gone in there for a while before returning to the room for a movie marathon.

Our second day in Duluth was spent getting lots of exercise, both in the hotel gym and a whole lot of walking. We also took a great boat tour up the river and around the bay in Lake Superior. They have this huge bridge, that unlike the regular drawbridges, which they also have, this particular one goes up and down like an elevator. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The architecture here is pretty cool. I highly recommend it.

Next stop-Lake Minnetonka! So excited!