Grandma's Marathon - 2010

This weekend we, like so many other crazy Minnesotans, made the annual road trip up to Duluth for Grandma's Marathon. The weather was beautiful and Calhoun finished, which was amazing because he didn't train. Lucky for him, he has a lot of base-miles under his belt so he survived ad was even able to enjoy a flight at Fitger's Brewhouse.


But, I'm sure lots of people out in the blogosphere are writing about Grandma's and how beautiful it is and how much fun it is. I could also write about how great it was to hang out with family and let the dog swim in Lake Superior, but the real Minnesota story about this past weekend is an amazing place on Scenic 61 called the New Scenic Cafe. We scheduled our Father's Day Lunch at the New Scenic Cafe on a recommendation of a friend of my brother-in-law. The food was AMAZING. It cannot be described. It was delicious and the mimosas were a perfect way to top it off. After enjoying our lunch we strolled around the beautiful flower garden in the front of the restaurant and practiced being nature photographers.

When we got Sogn out of the car we wandered around a bit and tried to take pictures and the next thing we knew, ended up talking with the proprietor and chef, Scott Graden. Turns out he owns a few Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and didn't mind Sogn jumping on him (apparently the dog is going through a phase). He chatted with us about the restaurant and about the location, and even walked us down the road a little to a path down to the shore of the lake where we enjoyed the scenery and getting some energy out of the dog.

The New Scenic Cafe was amazing. First, the food was amazing and totally unexpected for a small cafe just north of Duluth. But I would say that the food was on par with anything that you could order in the new foodie places popping up all around the cities. But the wonderful thing about the New Scenic Cafe that is sometimes missing from new/trendy/foodie Minneapolis/St. Paul establishments is the Minnesota nice attitude. I really felt like once we were there, we had visited someone's house and had an amazing meal. They answered all of our questions about the food and we ate like kings, kept the coffee hot and took the time to show us a dog path down to the shore. On a beautiful Father's Day in Duluth, it really doesn't get better than that.