Life in the cracks at Artists Point

Artists Point in Grand Marais is a wonderful North Shore destination. If you're in Grand Marais and you've had your fill of t-shirt shops or microbrews, head out along the east, or left, side of the bay, through the big parking lot to the big old white house. Artists Point awaits.

Last year, our family was hanging in Grand Marais on the Fourth of July, escaping the bugs of the Sawbill Trail. We had a great visit to Artists Point. We went to the right, toward the lighthouse along cement retaining walls. A week or two ago, I went back to Artists Point, going left into the woods instead of right to the lighthouse.

At first glance, it's a smooth surface of bedrock. The glaciers did a great job smoothing down billion-year-old basalt. Waves wash off Lake Superior and flood away most soil development. Gale-force winds of November storms strip off any tree or shrub that is not fully surrounded bu other trees.

But look in the cracks and you'll find all sorts of life. In those cracks, there's just enough shelter for a bit of lichen to form, a bit of soil to gather.

Lots of three-toothed cinquefoil was popping up in the cracks:



In an old crack in the narrow strip of woods, where deep soil had collected moisture and created a little micro-bog, I found this Labrador tea, in bloom:



In the picture on top, did you see the kids popping out of the cracks?



Artists Point. Life in the cracks.

Temptation and tragedy at Temperance

There is no place finer on the North Shore than the mouth of the Temperance River, where you'll find a gravel beach and some very scenic campsites. The river has run through the deep gorge and rounded kettles and completes its path to Lake Superior in a last push of current. When the river was first named, there was no "bar" at its mouth (hence the no-drinking name), but now it does. It was right here on Saturday the Fourth of July that divers searched for the body of Ari Sommerfeld.

You'd think with a name like Temperance, a famous North Shore river would be a place of modesty and caution. But the Temperance River took another life this weekend. Overly brave men take risks there all the time, and in a few cases, the odds turn against them and the power of the river wins. The temptations at Temperance are too strong.

At least eight other people who have died in the Temperance River over the last 25 years. Four of them were men in the dangerous age range of 14 to 31. Statistics show that young men are by far the mostly likely to be drowning victims, probably because they overestimate their abilities and feel immortal.

But tragedy has struck older men and also women at the Temperance. Two young women drowned last year when they were carried into the current above the gorge.

Ari Sommerfeld, the victim this weekend, was exactly my age, 45. He was not saving a child's life; he was jumping into a whirlpool he'd jumped into numerous times before just for fun. His widow urges that no one go there again. But they will.

When I was young and immortal, my cousins and I used to jump off the cliffs just upstream from the highway, at the mouth of the main gorge. It was a thrill. We all survived. Once as an adult I met up with a group of teenagers from Duluth for an educational program on Lake Superior. They were polite but restless, asking their leader during most of my program "Can we go jumping now?" As a liability-conscious grown-up, my only response to that was, "After my program."

For me, the saddest tragedies at Temperance came in 1999 and 2000. Twice, fathers age 48 and 50 found their child in trouble, went in and saved the child, but then drowned themselves. Not even swimming themselves, taking no risks for themselves, they were drawn into danger by the tragedy of their child. As a now-cautious dad, I totally understand that.

You can't ban swimming at Temperance, any more than you can ban hiking on steep trails or crossing wide highways. With the temptations, there will always be tragedy.

Take the Scenic Route!

Fourth of July has come and gone, so summer on the North Shore is in high gear.

To me, one of the main indicators of summer on the shore is the big pick-up truck RV swaying and bouncing along Highway 61 at 45 mph leading a train of 5,6,8,10 cars through the curves. If you're in a hurry to get somewhere, it's frustrating to be caught in the train of cars. Passing on Highway 61 is a risky endeavor at any time.

But, hey, you're on vacation. If you're headed up or down the shore and the traffic is looking heavy, don't stress---relax and take the scenic route!

All along the North Shore, there are secondary roads that parallel Highway 61 and can get you from almost whatever Point A to nearly any Point B you want.



Last week I drove Lake County Road 3 from Two Harbors to Beaver Bay. It's a beautiful stretch of road through a variety of terrain. 30 miles of paved and gravel roads bypass 23 miles of Highway 61. The roadside was littered with wildflowers, from towering cow parsnip to meadow rue to fields full of daisies.

County Road 3 is really easy to find. You turn left (north) just past Bettys Pies and you're on it.

The first 8-10 miles are in lovely agricultural landscapes, with old barns and open fields, dark green ridges of the Superior Hiking Trail in the distance. Stop for pictures, but use caution as the road is narrow.

The middle 8 miles are on gravel and are very wooded. You're on old logging railroad grades here. Scattered through the woods are run-down tarpaper shacks left over from the railroad and logging days. You cross the upper reaches of familiar North Shore rivers, like the Gooseberry and the Split Rock; here they're just gurgling brooks.

The last 7 miles are paved again and bring you back through scenic fields and ridges, like this view near the Silver Bay airport:



One of the best parts of the drive is also one of the hardest to find. About 3.5 miles past the Silver Bay airport, with a hillside full of crushed boulders on the left, the road dips down and back up again. At the top of the far side of the dip, an unmarked clay dirt road turns roughly to the right and leads to a field. Below that field is Glen Avon Falls, a watery playground on the Beaver River.



From Glen Avon Falls, it's 1.2 miles further on County Road 3 to a T-junction with Lax Lake Road. Turn right on Lax Lake Road for the short drive down the hill to Beaver Bay. There, you can get back on the busy highway and continue on your way,

If you drive straight through, this scenic back route takes about an hour to drive. Plus, instead of getting mad at that bouncy, swaying camper, you can get happy about wildflowers, wildlife, and waterfalls.

Fireworks in Tofte...The Big Oops!

Check out this video from YouTube of the fireworks from Tofte on the Fourth of July. Someone recorded the video on their cellphone from about 350 feet away, but couldn't get the audio to work.



Maybe it was in honor of the 10th anniversary of the BWCA Blowdown...the Blow-Down Blow-Up!

Here's another view, with audio, from the KARE-TV website.

Amazing Maples of Mystery Mountain

After the very European first half of my Lutsen gondola hike, the second half of my hike was very Minnesotan. The trail cuts through one of the North Shore's most amazing sugar maple forests.

The sugar maples of the North Shore ridgeline are a fascinating story of forest ecology, of survival and persistence. The maples came to the North Shore 7000 years ago during a warm dry period, and when the warm climate moved back south, the maples found refuge along the North Shore as the big lake kept the air from getting too cold for them.

The Superior Hiking Trail route goes up and over Mystery Mountain, the least-used of Lutsen's ski hills. I first hiked this section of trail 17 years ago, field checking for The Guide to the Superior Hiking Trail. I noticed then that it was sugar maples everywhere. The big trees were sugar maples. The little trees were sugar maples. The shrubs were sugar maples. Even the ground cover was sugar maple. It's really really unusual to have one species of tree or flower dominant all levels of the forest like that.

17 years later, and I've had three jobs, two kids, and one wife. 17 years later in the maples of Mystery Mountain, nothing has changed. It's still maples everywhere.



I could see "baby" maples, biding their time, waiting for the opportunity to spring up. They don't get enough sunshine during the summer to grow much. I could also hear some of the big old maples creaking in the wind. And here and there in maple-land, one of those big maples had come down. Guess what happens next?



With the new sunshine breaking through the canopy, more maple trees grow up. The little trees make their mamas and papas proud as they grow up into the holes the old trees left when they died.

Ecologists might call this a climax forest. The maples are so perfectly suited to this environment that they replace themselves. One maple tree might not live more than a century, but the forest lives for millenia.

I'm sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere, about finding out what you're good at, being comfortable in your environment, something like that. Maybe as a father of two "sprouting" young men finding their places in the world, I saw some of my family in the forest.

A very European hike at Lutsen

My memories of hiking in Europe include gravity-defying gondola rides, permanently gray skies, and picnics in wildflower meadows featuring beef tongue.

Who knew I'd find almost all of those things right here on the North Shore?

I did the famous "gondola hike" at Lutsen Mountains yesterday. You take the mountain tram from the very Scandinavian village area of Lutsen up to the top of Moose Mountain, then hike on the SHT about four miles back down to your car. Europeans love gondolas, both the airborne mountain kind and the skinny canal boats in Venice.

At the top of the gondola ride is a fantastic view of Lake Superior not so far away but seemingly a mile down. There's also the Summit Chalet. No beef tongue on the menu, but it's an impressive selection given that the clients had to ride the tram to get there. The employees at the Chalet are likely to be real eastern Europeans, on the North Shore with summer work visas.

There are interpretive signs on the deck.



Read closely and you'll find some of the tortured English and bad punctuation that makes travel in Europe entertaining for native English speakers. Here's the text, closer up:



And those heavy gray cloudy skies? Very European!

From the Chalet, the hiking trail takes off along the side of Moose Mountain. It starts with a deck overlooking the steep north side of Moose Mountain. Windy? Rainy? Gray? Takes me right back to hiking the Odenwald in Germany.

The SHT spur has an ambitious trail route, skirting around the base of the cliffs rather than the safe and easy ridgetop route.



It's just a little like the Via Ferrata in the Alps, where they use fixed cables and ladders to get hiker/climbers through really technical terrain. Here they use a cedar branch nailed to another cedar tree. But grooving through, under and around the big rocks is still pretty cool.

Of course, at the end of the hike, back in the Scandinavian village, you can order a beer at Papa Charlies and celebrate conquering the trails.

Lutsen. Named after the town in Germany where the Protestant Swedes beat back the German Catholics in 1632, halfway through the 30 Years War. No beef tongue, but for the North Shore it's the most Euro destination of them all.

The North Shore starts here

The North Shore starts here. It's the rocks. And the kids.

The North Shore starts at the corner of the Duluth Lake Walk, at the gravel beach, by the old Endion station. This is the first place you can throw rocks in the water.



The beach has rocks. Rounded rocks, perfect for throwing. It has blue water to the clear horizon, as far as you could ever throw. It's the North Shore.

Sure, there's no soaring cliffs at the water's edge, full of squawking gulls. There's no rushing waterfalls, either. Canal Park does not have a decent place for the necessary North Shore pie. But there are kids throwing rocks into clear cold water. That makes it the North Shore.



We'd bring our son Hans at age 1 to the beach at Grand Marais or at Brighton Beach. We'd plop him down at the water's edge. Just like a Vikings fan in the easy chair saying "Time for the game," Hans would say, "T-whoa wocks in wally." Then he'd sit for ten minutes on the shoreline, totally serious and focused, and do just that. He's a North Shore natural.

The crowds from Canal Park find this beach naturally. Kids are drawn to it. Parking is free on weekends in the lot behind the Canal Park Lodge. Below is a map/photo from Google Maps. Look at all those rocks. And water.



Go, throw. Even you grown-ups. You're on the North Shore now.

Happy Pollinators Week!

The North Shore blueberry crop is looking good this year, thanks to the blackflies who got real busy back in early June during the bloom. No wonder I was swatting 'em away when I hiked the Bean and Bear loop this spring and took this picture. Blackflies and Berries go together like Bean and Bear lakes.



The lupine are starting to bloom along the North Shore's Highway 61. Those pretty colors attract tourists, but more importantly, they attract bumblebees, who nuzzle right into the globular petals, schmeering themselves with pollen and passing that gift along to the next patch of lupines down the highway.

Love the elegant shape of the columbine? So do the hummingbirds, whose schnozzes fit the tubes of a columbine just perfectly in their suspended search for the sweet stuff.

Black flies and bumblebees can eat you or sting you. But, as pollinators, they're critical to North Shore ecology, especially for the wildflowers we love.


It's National Pollinators Week! Go hug a hummingbird.

Stop thinking, start sighing.

In my last blog posting, I wrested with prepositions. By the lake? In the lake? On the lake?

It reminded me of first-year German: "aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu!" (Phonetically, that would be "Owss, ow-sir, bye, mitt, knock, zite, vaughn, tsoo", and they are the prepositions that are always followed by the dative article.)

I get way too deep into this stuff. Way too many grammar lessons framed by rigid language rules. Latin students get "Amo amas amat, amamus amatis amant" for "I love, you love, he loves, we love...."

The evening light last night was gorgeous. To get these grammar lessons out of my head, I headed out for a walk on the Park Point beach in the backyard. Big thunderheads were rolling by along the South Shore. Some Emerson Lake and Palmer popped into my head, from "Roundabout":

In and around the lake
Mountains come out of the sky
And they stand there.

And if those mountains coming out the sky weren't enough, the sun was putting on quite a show behind the Aerial Lift Bridge:



With an ELP Moog synthesizer riff rolling through my head, I could only sigh, with the cool warm water ticking my toes, "Um yum hmm aah."

"On" and "in" the Lake...it's summer

We get to change our prepositions now. It's summer. We're not just "by" Lake Superior anymore. We're on it. For heaven's sake, we're IN it.

We're not "on the shore"; we're "on the lake." This Father's Day, my brother-in-law David Rauschenfels took a boat full of three generations of the family out on his 30-foot speed boat. We went under the lift bridge, spun around in some big surf, then cruised the harbor.

Here's Hans after sitting in the bow for a stiff headwind:



Today, the whole Slade/Rauschenfels family hit the backyard beach en masse for the first time this year. It was a big day on the beach, as temps in the 80s inland drove the crowds across the lift bridge to our neighborhood. While the hundreds of others on the beach made it about ankle deep, we were in that lake. Under the water. Leaping after wayward Frisbees. Dunking and splashing and playing hard.

Lake Superior, you are no longer just big and scary. You are big, scary, and a lot of fun. It's summer.

Throw me in the water

I dove into the lake this weekend. Big old cold Lake Superior. Air temps had climbed into the 90s, suffocating the marathon runners. The lake water warmed up from unswimmable cold, maybe the 50 degree range, to tolerable, maybe 60 degrees. I didn't want to go at first, but with a flat-out dive I was in the water. Oh, and it felt good.

Something about going out against my will, something about how it all turned out all right, brought me back to a bittersweet memory of summer camp. Summer camps are notorious for their traditions, for good and for evil. I could spend weeks on this blog analyzing my summer camp experiences and how they made me what I am today. That would get really boring. So I'll just do this once.



I spent most of my summers at Camp Koochiching, on Rainy Lake up by International Falls. Unbelievably, I'd go away for 5 or 8 weeks at the age my sons are now. The camp sessions were half in camp, on Deer Island, doing traditional camp things like sailing or riflery or woodcraft, and half on trail going to some deep wilderness lakes and rivers in the Quetico and in the crownlands north of there.

One goofy tradition at Koochiching was randomly throwing people in the lake. A mob would gather around some popular boy or some irritating boy, grab him fully clothed, then march him squirming spread-eagle down to the dock, chanting "IN THE LAKE! IN THE LAKE!" And in they'd go, with a huge splash and cascades of laughter from the throwers and the one who got tossed.

Here's the dock at the camp area for 11-12 year olds:



I was so afraid of being the next victim that I dug into my own emotional trench. I would not be that popular boy whose charisma demanded being taken down a few notches with a good wetting. I would not be that nerdy boy who would make a good victim with squeeling and cries of injustice. Six summers at Koochiching, and I never got the toss. I perfected the art of the middle path, to neither boast nor to irritate.

But since when was going into the lake such an awful thing? Sure, you'd get wet, along with your clothes. Clothes dry in an hour, kids even more quickly. Tossing the nerdy kid just because he'd squeel was cruel, I'll admit. And when the mob tossed your mattress in, too, that was taking it way too far.

Maybe it's nostalgia for youth and the path not taken, but I'm wishing now I'd been tossed a few times. I want to be "out there." I want people to respond to me, to react to me. Sure I'd put up a little fight, but I'd let you win. Get a good swing going as you send me over the dock edge, okay? And if you toss my mattress in, too, I'll get you back.

Canyoneering the North Shore

Thank you, Bryan Hansel, for seizing the day and capturing it on video. This vid show Bryan and a friend descending the Kadunce River up past Grand Marais, with ropes and safety equipment.

Kadunce Canyoneering from Bryan Hansel on Vimeo.

The streams and canyons of the North Shore are calling out for creative thinking outdoor professionals. If you're looking for a new North Shore adventure experience, get in touch with Bryan through his website.

Finger Point trail

Grandma's Marathon has plugged up Canal Park tighter than a North Shore log drive, I'm stuck here on Park Point for the weekend. That's not so bad, since it's an incredibly gorgeous day, temps surprising us in the 90s. Unfortunately the Lake Superior water is too cold for a good swim.

I'm stuck at the far west end of the North Shore, but I'm thinking about the far east end and a great hike I had there four or five years ago, on the "Finger Point Trail." It's a a really cool hike literally just past the Canadian border, right across Pigeon River.

I found this link, the only reference online to this terrific little trail. Get your passport out and go!

UPDATE 6/28/09: Just found this page, thanks to Grand Portage photographer and explorer Travis Novitsky.

The big, bare rock of Sugarloaf

I spent six years as the Executive Director of Sugarloaf Interpretive Center Association, which manages Sugarloaf Cove up in Schroeder. I fielded a lot of questions there about the name, "Sugarloaf." There's a big bare rock out on the point that makes up the Cove. That is the Sugarloaf. Turns out, other people have claimed that name for their own big, bare rock.

Down in Winona a few weeks back, I took in Minnesota' other Sugarloaf. Not the motel, the big bare rock up on the hill.



Then there's this famous Sugarloaf, the big bare rock in Rio:



And who can ever forget this Sugarloaf? It's rock, big and bare. Come on, remember "Green-eyed Lady"?

"See, I told ya you get ice cream."

Minnesota DNR teams with Dairy Queen to reward safe young boaters

Minnesota kids wearing life jackets while boating this summer will not only be staying safe, but also could be rewarded with an ice cream treat.

The DNR has partnered with Dairy Queen to provide a PFD Panda Award certificate to youngsters who are observed by conservation officers wearing a life jacket while boating. The certificate includes a tear-off coupon that entitles the child to a free cone or cheeseburger from participating Dairy Queen restaurants.

“We at International Dairy Queen are excited with the idea,” said Ryan Hassebroek, regional marketing manager for the Minnesota-based company. “We thought this was a great way to encourage children to wear their life jackets and we hope that safe boating behavior continues right through adulthood.”

DNR COs report that children have called them over to their family’s boat so they can earn the life jacket award. One child said to his friend who had come along, “See, I told ya you get ice cream for wearing your life jacket.”

(Released June 15, 2009)

Go go Mount Jo

The North Shore is a rugged, scenic place. But along the Minnesota shore, the most rugged and the most scenic part is in Grand Portage and beyond to the Pigeon River. It's the far end of the North Shore, and it's worth the extra hour drive past Grand Marais.

The land and the terrain are stupendous. Even the wayside rests are spectacular. The wayside rest with the best view on the North Shore or even in Minnesota is Mt. Josephine wayside just east of Grand Portage and just west of the Pigeon River. Highway 61 cuts through the massive diabase dike of Mt. Jo and then this amazing view pops out.

To the east (above), there are great views from a pretty good height out over Wauswagoning Bay and the Susie Islands.

To the south (below) are the rugged cliffs of Mt. Josephine itself:



The facilities there are only an outhouse and a Dumpster, which has some sage advice and proscriptions:



Visitor facilities in the Grand Portage/Pigeon River area will be changing over the next few years, as the new visitor center opens at the State Park. I hope this wayside rest will stay open, if only for the views.