Grand Marais

Grand Marais is built at the base of a tombolo, so it's got beaches on both sides.  The one on the east side is another broad sweep of reddish gravel, much like some of the beaches we visited earlier.  There's some large riprap and an assortment of partially failed seawalls trying to protect the places where development pushed a little too far across the beach. (Isn't this so often the case, where erosion is essentially a hazard of our own making).

AERIAL VIEW
The beach on the west side consists mainly of a small pocket beach with a sheet pile wall on the tombolo end and an impressive riprap revetment protecting the road and the Java Moose coffee house at the landward end.

The french fur traders left more than one Grand Marais on Lake Superior - we visited another a couple years ago (Grand Marais, Michigan) after visiting the Grand Sable Dunes. A mere 200 miles east of here across the big lake Gitche Gumee.