Fall U.P. Retreat- Day 2

Friday, October 6

We stayed up pretty late on Thursday watching a movie, so we slept in until almost 8 a.m. yesterday!! Glorious.

The weather seemed a little iffy and we weren’t in any hurry, so it was a slow, relaxing morning. Made tea and puttered around and I baked some cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

I spent a while looking at a travel guide in the cabin, a map and my phone to sketch out a little plan for the day. There’re endless things to do and see in the U.P., but the idea of this trip was more to relax. Low key. So we just wanted to pick a couple of places to go and that’s it.

We decided on Silver Falls and Canyon Falls. There are oodles of waterfalls in the area; many rivers snake off from Lake Superior, and waterfalls come with them.

We like waterfalls a lot, so we’re usually always game to visit them. They are just so beautiful, and Ethan especially likes ones where he can climb on rocks.

First stop- nearby Silver Falls.

The waterfalls are not all huge- in fact, many are on the smaller side. But the surroundings are gorgeous. (And there are also some very impressive ones, too- there’s a variety.)

We parked and hiked down the short trail to various viewing points. We were the only ones here and it was very peaceful.

Like I said, the leaf color is hit or miss, but there were some pretty ones along here.

The actual falls here:

These are more of a long, sprawling waterfall as the river descends.

Next we drove about 10-15 minutes to a larger falls. Definitely more well known as there were multiple cars in the parking lot, but still not “busy” at all.

The hike in was a little longer but still pretty short. Very, very pretty! Being in the woods is so calming. Unfortunately, it started to rain fairly steadily at this point.

We made it to the falls! Canyon Falls. Gorgeous.

We crouched down under the overhang here for 10 minutes or so to see if the rain would stop, but it didn’t. So, we proceeded and took our photos in the rain. 🙂

Hiking back out:

The rain didn’t seem to be letting up, and we were hungry, anyway. We had packed food in the car thinking if the weather cleared we might picnic somewhere. But it was definitely not picnic weather!

So, we stopped at a local bar/grill for pizza. (After blasting the heat in the van for a while to dry off.)

The pizza was SO good. Which is impressive, because this is a rather remote area and one of not that many restaurants that are even around.

Really, the lifestyle here is incredibly different from at home.. we don’t even have cell service! There is a nice little town nearby with a handful of restaurants and cafes and some other amenities, but just in general- it’s a very “back woods” type of life around here. You have to be a certain type of person I think to live here! Definitely probably need to be pretty introverted and like a lot of peace and quiet! haha.

The restaurant was actually fairly busy! Mostly locals and a couple of other tourists. It was cute, too, with the whole “north woods” theme.

After lunch (which was a late lunch), the weather was still spotty rain. So we headed back to the cabin for some rest and relaxation/aka cozy time.

Here’s our little “living room”. I built a fire in the wood stove and stretched out on the couch. I wrote my blog post, snoozed for a bit and read. Ethan read and then played some games on his phone.

The cabin has a Bose CD player up on a shelf, so I randomly decided to push play and see if there was anything in there. Well, there was a Frank Sinatra’s greatest hits CD in there!! Omg. I couldn’t have picked a more perfect soundtrack for our afternoon. Seriously- even Ethan agreed… it felt like we were in a movie. Rain falling, fire on, warm drinks, Sinatra crooning, gorgeous views out my window… haha. It was utter relaxation mode.

Eventually we also watched a movie together- Liar Liar on Netflix. So funny! Ethan has said repeatedly how he loves snuggling in to watch a movie in the cabin’s living room with the fire on. He keeps saying, “It’s so cozy!” That’s my boy. 😉 Way to appreciate coziness! lol.

By evening the rain picked up even harder. I took hot chocolate out on the covered porch with a blanket and watched the rain. Mmmmmm. The smell of the wood smoke out the chimney with the cold, damp air smelled so, so good to me. I literally just tried to breathe it all in. I wish I could like, bottle up the feeling and scents of relaxation here and take it all home with me.

A short while later it was dusk, and the rain seemed to be stopping. We didn’t want to miss an opportunity for another bonfire , so I toweled off the wet chairs and built one outside. We made s’mores. 🙂

I’d brought ingredients to make tacos, but we decided we weren’t really hungry for a full dinner after our later pizza lunch. We kind of snacked our way through dinner instead… I had a bunch of cheese and crackers and we’d made popcorn during the movie, too. (Plus the marshmallows and s’mores…).

We didn’t stay at the bonfire TOO long… it kind of kept drizzling just a little on and off and we weren’t sure if the sky was going to let loose or not. The wind also picked up after a while and the wind sounded creepy howling through the trees in the dark woods. 🤣🤣 (I am a wannabe wilderness woman, but really just sort of a wimp. LOL.)

We did get a good 45-60 minutes though of really nice, peaceful time at the bonfire before we decided to move inside.

I then made an inside fire again, and we made more hot chocolate. Ethan requested another comedy movie, so we watched The Out-Laws on Netflix (which Ivan and I had already seen, but Ethan hadn’t… I knew he’d find it hilarious, so I watched it again. 😊 Funny the second time, too! Haha.)

And that was our day! A wonderful combination of fall activities, sightseeing, relaxing….

Today, Saturday, was our last full day. We are here just 3 nights, so we head home tomorrow (Sunday). We had another awesome day today, but more on that later.

I’m writing this on my phone from the sauna! We ended up going kayaking a bit ago (weather cleared and was quite nice out), but my leggings got all wet and I was kinda cold when we returned. I think Ethan has the wood stove going downstairs… I’m going to hop out of the sauna now and let him switch spots with me! 🙂 (it’s really just big enough for 1.)

More tomorrow!!