Northern Minnesota Highlights
Hey Dinner Clubbers! I know I've been totally lax in my blogging of late. I think I'm just experiencing the end of winter blahs and feeling generally unmotivated. It is, however, time to snap out of it. For my welcome back blog entry I thought I'd put up some pictures of our weekend. Nick and I headed up to the North Shore where we snuck in one last cross country ski outing for the year. The conditions were sketchy, but the day was beautiful, with light snow falling amidst the cedars and birch trees, and deer walking across the trail not ten feet in front of us. On our 3km trail we came across a sloppy Joe stand, but it was, unfortunately, closed. Quite a good idea though...perhaps next time we'll catch them during serving hours.
In addition to some Nordic skiing, we also spent some delightful time in the wood burning sauna at the place we stayed. I love saunas and need to figure out how to convert our cedar closet downstairs into one so I can use it every night before bed. How dreamy would that be? Since that's not happening anytime soon, I made sure to take full advantage during our stay. To round out the whole Scandinavian experience, we visited that awesome house seen above, whose ground floor is a gift shop and upstairs is living quarters. I seriously felt like we were in the Swedish countryside when that thing came into view.
Other un-pictured highlights included a stop at Sven's Clogs in Chisago City on our drive up. It's my latest local love. It features shelves and shelves of gorgeous clog sandals, clog boots, and clog clogs all hand made right here in our very own back yard. I brought home an early birthday present! In Duluth we stopped and had lunch and beers at Fitger's. I had an amazing smoked dobblebock from their Great Lakes Series. It was deliciously rich and smoky with hints of sweetness. We also stopped at a fun yarn shop in Knife River and had a delicious and picturesque lunch at the New Scenic Cafe on Saturday. Oh, and I almost forgot, Nick picked up some locally smoked trout too. It will probably make an appearance on our dinner menu some time soon.
It was a fantastic weekend full of things that make Minnesota great. Hopefully it gives me the kick in the pants I need to get back into the blog routine.
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