In winter it's easy to capture dramatic photos on any Lake Superior beach. You'll find lots of opportunities along Highway 61 for your own North Shore icy shoreline experience. … read more
Winter is always treacherous on Lake Superior. The 1913 storm recounted in this book still stands as the deadliest storm in Great Lakes history. Called the "white hurricane," it roared for three days. … read more
Our winter snow is finally melting and water is plunging down the fabulous streams of the North Shore. Quiet and pretty summertime waterfalls are now muddy, raging torrents. It’s a great time to explore! … read more
Just in the last few days, the waterfalls of the North Shore, from Duluth to Grand Portage, have shed their curtains of ice and are starting to roar. … read more
It's been an amazing month for skiing on the North Shore. Just when you think a thaw is around the corner, another 5-6 inches of snow comes out of nowhere, the temps drop, and the groomers carve out another perfect ski trail. … read more
Three things you have to do before summer is over.Fall is on its way. North of us in Ontario the aspen trees are already turning. Here are three things you could do on the North Shore, but if you can’t get down to Lake Superior, do these things anyway. They’re like in the frozen lake after a sauna...an experience you need in order to set your clock to the season. S'Mores stand at the State Fair One: Go to a festival. You just have to get somewhere where you can get shoved around in the crowd and buy … read more
Organic blueberries ready to be picked, Shari's Berries, August 7, 2012 We went to Shari's Berries this week to pick blueberries. While it was raining heavily in Duluth and all the way up the expressway toward Two Harbors, as soon as we turned up Homestead Road and away from Lake Superior, we drove out of the rain. Typical Lake Superior "funk" (and I don't mean the musical style, just the cool, gray moist lake-effect so-called weather)The gray funky feeling stayed with us for berry picking. Shari herself met us at the gate and immediately started apologizing for the picking conditions. Maybe … read more
The great flood of June 2012 is still receding, and we are just now grasping the full scale of its impact. While most of the attention is rightfully on the washed out roads and thousands of moldy wet basements, the trails enjoyed by North Shore hikers, bikers and nature enthusiasts have also suffered greatly. More details to come in a future post.Five days now after the rains, the first big chunks of debris have arrived on the Park Point beach here in Duluth. It's a tragic treasure hunt, sorting through all this stuff that was, until very recently, someone's backyard … read more
What an amazing day we had on Saturday here in Duluth. The meteorologists got it all wrong in the right way. What started as a forecast of an inch or two of snow overnight turned into the biggest single dump of snow we've had in over a year. Apparently, two air masses ran into each other over the western part of Lake Superior and the resulting lift sucked the moisture out of the open lake water and turned it into snow. Lots of snow. Snow that fell all day. We shoveled three times just for the joy of shoveling. Meteorologists, at … read more
The winter of 2011-2012 is off to a slow start. Nature has not provided much snow to the North Shore area. I've chronicled desperate times before in this blog, from back in 2008, when we weren't skiing until late December and I biked on the beach and ran screaming down ski trails. I'm grumpy now, wanting to get out on real snow on a real trail. The Duluth Denfeld Hunters Nordic Ski team has been skiing on snow for two weeks now. Thanks to the generosity of Spirit Mountain, the Denfeld team has been able to practice and race on the … read more