Burlington Bay Campground, Two Harbors

We spent Memorial Weekend in Two Harbors, MN at Burlington Bay Campground. It’s a city run campground on Lake Superior, the Greatest Lake of All Time (G.L.O.A.T) and only 20 minutes from my true love, Duluth.

Buddy gazes upon the beauty of Lake Superior

We got up to the campground around 5 p.m. and thought we’d have lots of time to get set up and crack a few beers before our friends joined us in Two Harbors for the weekend. We were wrong.

Set Up Gone Wrong

We got the very last reservation available, so I can’t complain about the spot, but still, it wasn’t great. It was a pretty large spot, but the sewer hookup was closer to the front of the site so we couldn’t back all the way in to the site and still have our sewer hooked up. We briefly considered just pulling forward at the end of the weekend and emptying the sewer in order to make the most of our site, but there was a tree in the gravel pad of the campsite that would have prevented us from using the outdoor kitchen or opening the awning if we backed up much further. So we backed into the site, leaving lots of open space behind us. I appreciate the city of Two Harbors conservation efforts, but that tree was really in the way. I tripped over it more than once and the dogs got their tie-outs wrapped around it all the time. There was also no view of Lake Superior from our site – if you stood in the middle of the road in front of our site, you could see the beautiful lake, but where our fire pit and picnic table were located, the only view was of Highway 61 and the neighbor’s campsite. Still, it was walking distance to the G.L.O.A.T and well shaded, so it wasn’t that bad.

As I was getting everything out of the camper for the outdoors, Jamey was connecting the water. The hose hook-up was on the WRONG SIDE of the site and our hose did not reach that far. So we had no running water and already we knew we’d have to run to a store to get an additional hose. That was frustrating; when I made the reservations, they mentioned it needed a longer sewer hose, but not a longer water hose – as the Wedding Singer says, “that information would have been useful YESTERDAY!” But we soldiered on with the intention of getting everything else done and driving back to a hardware store.

The section we were in was on a slight incline, everything leaned to one direction, so we had to elevate the other side of our camper to be level. We’ve used a 2 x 6 before for this job, but left that in the garage at home. We had the leveler blocks, so we tried to use those instead. We’ve been using them as support for the stabilizer jacks, but never as a leveling mechanism, and it turns out, we were not entirely sure how they work for leveling. We stacked two blocks together in front of each wheel and pulled the trailer forward, and continued our set up.

While Jamey continued to lower the stabilizing jacks, I was dealing with a crazy dog (Buddy) and trying to figure out where to set up the outdoor rug on this weird slope. Suddenly, the camper lurched forward, off the leveling blocks and the whole thing just fell forward. That was rather terrifying. After some frantic Googling and YouTubing, we learned the proper way to use the leveling blocks involved making a single, long platform. Thankfully, nothing seemed broken, we just had to hook up to the truck again and retry the set up.

We paused the set up to quickly run into the main area of Two Harbors to grab another hose and hopefully a 2 X 6, but small towns being what they are … we couldn’t find an open lumber yard. Thankfully at last there was a Shopko nearby that sold the right hose.  By this point I still had all four bikes (yes, four; our friends wanted to borrow our other bikes) inside the camper blocking the fridge, but I still managed to reach in and grab us some much needed beers (Sam Adams Summer Variety Pack; filled with a great selection of good summery drinking beers. I love the Summer Ale and the Got to Gose)!

Feeling frustrated and ready to be done, we resumed the set-up process when suddenly the sky opened up and it began to pour. Cool, setting up in the rain. We ran back to the truck and waited out the rain. Toby got impatient waiting to get to his couch. Thankfully the storm moved through and we continued set up, this time everything went off without further incident.

Burlington Bay Campground Review

There’s a lot to be said about the drawbacks of this campground in Two Harbors; in addition to the above complaints, there isn’t really a good public access to the shoreline within the campground. There are stairs to the shore, but they’re basically in someone’s site (we know from experience how frustrating that is) and the stairs open onto some treacherous rocks, not the safest option for a clumsy person walking a excited dog. Just outside the campground there is a public beach and very nice hiking trail, it’s just a short walk to get there.

The campground has a few sections, the sites in the main section were pretty close together, but they all seemed to have at least a partial view of the lake. The area we were in was like stadium seating, with increasingly fewer views of the lake, and by the time you reached our site (#67) our view was nonexistent, except from the road, but it was a nice wooded site.

We have a good bathroom in our camper, so we didn’t need to use their bathrooms, but with four of us staying in the camper, there were times it was just easier to use the public restroom. They were OK, just concrete block walls and concrete floors. The bathroom closest to our site was just painted so it smelled like a weird mix of fresh paint and diapers.

The area further down the road from us was amazing; and if we ever come back to this campground in Two Harbors, I hope we can get a spot there. It’s on the top of the hill with great, sweeping views of the lake. There isn’t much shade up there, but those views … I am dreaming of setting up my hammock in those spots and just losing myself in the glorious views of Lake Superior.

Overall, I’d come here again if we can get a better spot. It was great to be right on the lake and have such a great hiking trail nearby.

Castle Danger Brewery, Two Harbors

Our friends, Lon and Rachel arrived just as we had finished most of the set-up, in time to drink beer. They brought their grandpuppy, Nikita, an eighteen-month old German Shepherd, with them to Two Harbors, to hang out with our boys. So many Shepherds!

Jamey and I have birthday’s two days apart and our birthdays are almost always over Memorial Weekend. My birthday was Sunday, and while Jamey’s birthday wasn’t over the weekend, we were still celebrating his birthday tangentially. I got him the Coleman Roadtrip Grill he’s been dreaming of for the last year.

I ordered it on Amazon and assumed (hoped) I would get home before he did on the day it was delivered so I could hide in the camper and surprise him, but alas, he got home first and the surprise was ruined. He still loves the grill! Jamey and Lon got the thing assembled before we started drinking in earnest, and it turned out to be a very easy set up. So, with that done, we leashed up all three dogs and walked to Castle Danger Brewing Company for delicious beer. I had their Nordic; a Juniper-Rye Lager. It was very tasty! The Castle Cream Ale is always a good choice. Later, when we went into Duluth, a couple places we visited had their Strawberry Castle Cream Ale, which is delicious. Jamey had his usual IPA, the White Pine Project IPA. He seemed to enjoy it plenty!

By the time we got to the brewery, it was already around 8 p.m. and we were starving. Initial plans were to grill steaks for dinner Friday night, but no one wants to eat steak at 10 p.m. So we ordered Do North pizza, Rachel and I took the purebred Shepherds for a walk to pick it up and delivered it the quarter mile back to the brewery. Eventually, we walked back to the campground and stayed up drinking by the fire way too late into the night.

Super Saturday

Nikita was the first to wake Saturday morning, so Rachel and I took all the dogs for a morning constitutional. We came back to the site and I made some coffee and Rachel and Lon took Nikita for a longer walk. After caffeinating for a while, I took Buddy for a long walk too (Toby, like his dad, was happy to sleep more). We followed the road to a great walking trail, where we met our friends again. We all walked along the shore and let the dogs play for a couple hours while Jamey caught up on his beauty sleep.

The hiking trail here was gorgeous, with beautiful, sweeping views of the lake and easy access to the rocky shore. Nikita chased sticks into the lake, Buddy drank the lake. Four of five miles and two hours later, I finally got a text message from Jamey wondering where we all were, so we headed back to the campsite for some lunch.

Later that day, we all went to Duluth with the dogs and took a good, long stroll along the Lake Walk, stopping for a drink at Canal Park Brewing. Their beers are fine, but their location is what makes this place amazing. They have a great patio that overlooks the lake walk and Lake Superior.

Buddy was on edge this trip, I think the addition of new people and an extra dog had his anxiety on high alert, so he was not a very well-behaved boy; barking at all the dogs and he really, really didn’t like the horses. There are a lot of horse drawn carriages going through Canal Park, and every time Buddy spotted one, he lost his damn mind.

We continued on down the way to Endion Station Public House for Fitger’s Brew-au. It was cold next to the lake, so we were happy to sit by the fire pit! Everyone got lei’s, even the dogs, and Toby was happy to show off his fancy neck-ware. Of course, that many big, beautiful dogs are very attention getting, so all three dogs got tons of pets!

Look how cute he is!

After a couple hours, we drove back to our campground in Two Harbors and cooked up those steaks we still had waiting for us. Mmmm, steak. We built a great fire, thanks in part to Nikita’s stick hunting skills! That girl loves sticks, so we had lots of kindling and poker sticks to choose from. She even grabbed onto a still standing, but dying, tree branch and yanked it down! That dog has more energy that any puppy I’ve ever seen!

Nikita has never met a stick she didn’t like

My Birthday

Sunday morning came, and with it, my birthday. All I wanted was a day of being taken care of, so Jamey got up to let the dogs out this time. In my ideal world, he would have stayed up and made me coffee and breakfast at that point, but he was still half drunk and went back to sleep. I laid in bed a while longer, but the dogs were restless so I got up. I was about to make myself a pot of coffee (Rachel, Lon and Nikita were out somewhere) when I decided I would walk to the Vanilla Bean, the breakfast joint in Two Harbors, for some fancy birthday coffee. So, Buddy and I set out on our way (I tried asking Toby to come with, but he was busy communing with his couch).

When I was almost to the restaurant, I ran into Rachel & Lon (and Nikita) with a giant pecan roll they got for my birthday breakfast. What a nice surprise! They stayed outside with Buddy (there was no outdoor window for ordering, as I had expected) and I went in and ordered a large latte. When we got back to the site, I had to lure Jamey out of bed with the promise of sharing my pecan roll.

Rachel and Lon packed up and headed home Sunday morning and we got ready to head out for a good bike ride. We drove up to Gooseberry Falls and took the bike trail from there. We rode a very hilly 17-mile ride to Silver Bay. Based on how close to or far away from the lake we were, it was either very warm or very chilly. We paused for lunch at a small town restaurant before heading back. The ride was gorgeous and challenging.

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Once we got back and cleaned up, we leashed up the boys and went back to Duluth for my birthday dinner. I was torn between a good Italian restaurant with views of the lake, or a dog-friendly place, and while Italian food is my favorite, I opted for the dog friendly patio so I could spend my birthday with my favorite boys (and Jamey). So it was back to Canal Park Brewing Co for dinner, and then back to our tiny home in Two Harbors to relax.

With a little bit more kindling and a bit of tending, we got the fire roaring again. Just as I had settled in next to the warm fire, wrapped in my blanket, laying in my hammock, it started to rain. So, we ran inside, took our drinks to bed and turned on Netflix. I have no idea what we watched on Netflix because I was asleep within 10 minutes.

Jay Cooke State Park

The next morning we got everything torn down and put away and were on our merry way. Once we got on the road, we decided to stop and hike at Jay Cooke State Park since we had just bought the new annual State Park pass.

To get to the hiking trails, we had to cross a swinging bridge over the St. Louis River. Toby was terrified and army-crawled across the bridge!

It was a very rainy weekend and the trails were very muddy. And Toby was already pretty tired from the long weekend of excitement, so he needed lots of rest breaks to catch his breath and cool down. And since he seemingly wanted to spite us for dragging him on this exhausting hike, several of those breaks were in pure mud spots. Needless to say, the dogs got baths once we got home.

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Overall, this was a great trip. It was fun to have friends with us and spend my birthday in Two Harbors and on Lake Superior! The only thing I’d change is I wish our camper had slideout, it’s crowded enough with two adults and two dogs, but adding an extra two adults and a dog … well, I’m thankful the weather was nice enough to be outside most of the time. A few more years and we’ll upgrade to a bigger camper (Jamey wants a fifth wheel now that we have this massive truck).