so far, so good!

I'm on my first real vacation of 2013! A friend flew in from out of town and we drive from the Twin Cities to Grand Marais. And, you may wonder why, if I'm supposed to be relaxing on vacation, am I sitting here on the internet writing? Well, because we're staying at a B&B and breakfast won't be served for T-29 minutes and I'm trying to distract myself because I'm very hungry after not having real dinner last night.

And why did we not have real dinner last night? Probably because we had burgers in the middle of the afternoon on the way here at the Duluth Grill, which has been featured on Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives. The burgers were quite tasty (friend had a bison burger, I had an asian peanut burger with an egg on top), but the homemade onion rings were outstanding. I like that this restaurant is into locally grown foods.

The clear favorite part about the Duluth Grill, for me anyway, was the Banana Cream Pie, which was featured on the DDD show specifically. I don't really need to say much here - just look at the picture.

Yup.

We were also told about a place called Betty's Pies that we just HAD to stop at. Because I'm terrible with judging distance, I assumed it was about half way between Duluth and Grand Marais, so we'd have some time to settle after the Banana Cream gloriousness (is that a word?). But no. About 45 minutes later, we were sitting at the counter of Betty's Pies having this:

I'm a little embarrassed about it, but we're on vacation - and I can't remember the last time I had a 2-pie day. We had a blueberry (which we were a bit indifferent about) and the Great Lakes pie (apple, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, and rhubarb, topped with oatmeal crumble yum). The Great Lakes pie was a big win.

And that, my friends, is why we didn't have dinner last night. On the bright side, we are now only T-15 minutes until breakfast, and I'll leave you with a couple of view pics from our B&B.

View from the deck around 5:15 a.m.

View from the deck - a little after 7 a.m.