Grand Marais

I've spent 57 years of my life traveling to this small but upscale town on the shores of Lake Superior. It was a sleepy little town when I first learned to love the cool, brisk breezes that would blow over the rocky shore up to my grandmother's house. Many a morning was spent waking up to the sound of a lonely foghorn booming out from the gray misty drapes that had been drawn over the harbor.

Grand Marais has a rich heritage of tough Scandinavians and French Canadians who settled here in the late nineteenth century looking for a new life in a new land. They were fishermen and craftsmen who encourage their families to come to this rugged remote area of Minnesota to live among the pine and birch trees, much like their homeland. Or, they were of Native American descent whose ancestors had lived on the shores of "gichigami" for centuries. Roads were carved out among the rocky outcrops of the shoreline and gradually, the town grew. Many other small communities were built and the area is now a resort-filled haven of restful peace and tranquility--unless you decide to come up on a festival weekend when the traffic can be bumper to bumper!