Family Weekend up North!

 My cousin Amy's youngest, Natalie.  So much fun!!

Each year, we go up to the cabins (off the Gunflint Trail in Northern MN) for one weekend as a family.  The extended family on my Mom's side.  It is a great time, with lots of laughing, and more food than can possibly be necessary.  This year, we skipped the traditional renting of a cabin at Loon Lake lodge (in addition to the Struve cabin and our cabin), because the Struves added another cabin to their estate....a bit different than our other ones- with running water and electricity, road access, even laundry.  It is more like a small house, but beautiful, and perfect for Grandma and small kids.  Not as many people came up this year, because we had all been together over Memorial Day to celebrate Grandma's 90th birthday, but a few of us did, and we had a great time.  The weather was freakishly hot for the Boundary Waters, reaching over 90, but this gave us a great chance to try out the new dock, which detaches at the end and floats out to the lake for swimming.  Even Arlo enjoyed jumping off this, after getting quite a few pushes of persuasion first.  He had a grand ole time, chomping on lily pads to my dismay, and chasing dragonflies and other dogs.  On Sunday, Jim and I drove up to the end of the Gunflint trail and checked out a few other spots along the trail.  We then headed to 2 harbors, where we explored the trains and some things there, ate at a nice Thai restaurant in Duluth, and then headed down to Minneapolis, to catch our early Monday flight out to Utah.  Arlo went home with mom and Reily, to sleep for a day and visit relatives for the week.