The Sun Has Set on Split Rock Lighthouse – Part I

Split Rock Lighthouse State Park

—Highway 61 (~20 miles northeast of Two Harbors, MN)—

(You could probably guess it, but the store was closed by now!)

We knew it was dark out, but since we were driving right by, we decided to try and "night geocache" just to finish the North Shore off.  If you look at the below map, you can see the North Shore and where the eight North Shore state parks are located.  During the day we had already hit all six of the farthest north state parks, and now we only had Split Rock Lighthouse and Gooseberry Falls left.  It would save time and gas money if we were able to figure them out in the dark.  This made for one of the wildest state park geocaching attempts we had!

We had actually just been to Split Rock Lighthouse with the rest of the extended family (during the daytime).

We drove into Split Rock State Park just a few minutes after 9 pm and found our way to the Pebble Beach Picnic area for the first location.  We were able to find the next set of coordinates pretty easily.  It got much more challenging from here.

We keep emergency geocaching (and poison ivy) supplies in the car all of the time including a few headlamps.  So Luke put on one of the headlamps to try and find the rest of the locations in the dark.  (Not only was it overcast, but there was no moonlight either.)

"Gotcha!"

We drove down to the next stop and found the board, but it was dark.  There was not any moonlight, so it was almost pitch dark.  Luke wondered off into the woods on a trail and I stayed in the car.  This parking lot was actually almost completely full.  A lot of people were camping right up the trail from the sign below, which was on the side of the restroom building.  You never are very far from Lake Superior in this state park, which was very neat.

This is all I could see from the car... not a lot...

Eventually I could see Luke's headlamp light off in the distance (the darkness was thick), and I was happy to see him come back.  I can be a bit of a worrywort, and the idea of his scampering around by the cliffs near the lake was making me a bit nervous.  (Actually it was a lot of stairs going down to the lower level near the lake and back up.  Pretty creepy in the dark far beyond where the campsites were with no one around and only the crashing waves on your left and the cliffs on your right.)

He ended up coming back empty-handed... I was not disappointed, but happy to have him back (once again I am little bit of a worrywart).  Our first attempt at night geocaching was a failure (not the recommended mode of geocaching!).  Since we didn't get this cache, we decided to forgo stopping at Gooseberry Falls because we would have to come back another time to the North Shore anyway (and who doesn't want to do that, right?).   Stay posted for Split Rock Lighthouse State Park... Part II.

At the end of the day we couldn't really complain—we had finished this North Shore trip and achieved 6 of the 8 North Shore state parks' geocaches, bringing our total up to 60 done with only 22 left to go! 

The smiley faces are definitely taking over the entire state now!!  Just a few stubborn pockets of resistance are remaining.  (Like Nerstrand...)