German lesson: spazieren the North Shore

Wildflowers and Lichtenstein Castle, Swabian Alps

I just got back from a ten-day trip Germany. There is so much to learn and experience there, even with their natural areas. Amazing how in so densely populated a country there are such great trails and great experiences in natural areas.

Natural areas in Germany are:

• Very well-marked (excellent trail guides are available)
• Accessible by public transportation
• Lots of amenities (and by amenities, I mean beer) (or ice cream)
• Lots of people, and they’re better dressed than you are.

What's left of a blueberry muffin, sidewalk cafe, Berlin

If you want to go out on foot, you might need a little German vocabulary lesson. You might want to know the difference between spazieren (basically, going for a stroll) and wandern (hiking long distances)

 My books are mostly about wandern, longer distance hiking. While many Germans love to hike, virtually all Germans spazieren.

If you want a good German outdoor experience but don't want the jet lag, you can spazieren on the North Shore as well.

Where to stroll the North Shore, in style
One obvious place is the Downtown Lakewalk. You can put on your Sunday best, walk for a little while, stop at a sidewalk cafe for drinks or ice cream. Plenty of people, plenty of experience.

But wait, there’s more North Shore spazieren:

Head up the North Shore to Two Harbors and take a civilized stroll around Lighthouse Point. That’s Hike 14 in my book Hiking the North Shore. It’s a 3.4 mile loop that is two-thirds rocky Lake Superior shoreline and one-third city sidewalks. Throw in a lighthouse, a huge steam engine, and the Dairy Queen, and you’ve got a European-style hike experience.You can start this hike at Burlington Beach, just off Highway 61 at the city campground on the east edge of town.

For the ultimate German outdoor experience on the North Shore, head for Lutsen Mountains and take the gondola to the top of Moose Mountain. That’s where you start Hike 35 in my book, a 4.2 mile hike back down to the base along the Superior Hiking Trail. But you can totally just stroll along the ridgeline, enjoy the amazing views, then hang out at the mountain top chalet and enjoy the views some more...with a beverage.

Auf wiedersehen!

North Shore Fourth of July

It's hard to believe that it's already the Fourth of July. Since Independence Day falls on a Wednesday this year, the North Shore won't be quite as frantic with travelers making a long weekend out of the holiday. That means a great opportunity for North Shore fans to enjoy some great Fourth of July traditions.

It's going to be a lovely day, with breezes off Lake Superior keeping temps in the 70s despite the statewide heat advisory. 

Tofte Wilderness Trek 

Start your day off right with a 10 kilometer run (or walk) through the woods and ridges near Tofte. Just show up in Tofte at 7:45 AM for same-day registration. Here's more info.


Parades
Too hot to run along the North Shore? Sit and watch a parade instead. Festival at the Tofte Town Hall from 11-5, and parade at 2:00. Watch to make sure no float goes by twice.


Band Concerts
Come to Two Harbors and the bandshell in Thomas Owens park at 7:30 PM for a patriotic concert of American favorites. 

Fireworks
What's a Fourth of July without the pyrotechnics? Here's a quick run-down of where to catch a small-town show on the Shore. All shows start at dusk, about 10:00 PM in these northern latitudes.

Grand Portage on the lakeshore by the Lodge and Casino, at dusk 

Grand Marais, in the harbor from Recreational Park to Artist Point

Tofte, in the Town Park

Two Harbors, by the Depot


See you on the shore tomorrow!

Heritage Days: A great North Shore festival this weekend

Some North Shore towns seem to have a festival every weekend from May to October. Not to name names, but I'm thinking of a certain town that rhymes with "Brand Hooray".

No such festival overload in Two Harbors. The city on Agate Bay saves all their festing for one big weekend in July. This weekend, head for the Two Harbors Heritage Days Festival.

The festival runs from today through Sunday, July 10. The Minnesota Old West Society has already set up their camp by the depot. Friday is music and dancing all day, including a vocal performance with Lake County natives Andrew Gangestad and Nathan Herfindahl. Oh, and there's a Lutefisk Toss at 4:00.

The big day is Saturday, with the parade at 1:00, music all day at the Heritage Days Stage, and a special concert with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra at the historic bandshell.

Take some time away from the festivities to walk around Lighthouse Point. Look for blooming butterwort in the open Lake Superior ledgerock. Head out the slender breakwater to the lighthouse. Make the most of this one great weekend in Two Harbors!

Erkki Harju says "Ski" in Two Harbors

 

In twenty years of skiing on the North Shore's groomed trails, I've seen a lot of signs with basically the same message: Please don't walk on the groomed ski trail. I even remember the Nordic ski coach back in high school pleading with students in a school assembly to stay off the ski tracks around the athletic fields. But this sign, which I found yesterday at the Erkki Harju ski trail in Two Harbors, is by far the goofiest and maybe the most effective I've seen. 

No, that is not Erkki Harju himself with the shovels and the drawl. According to my son, that's Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons, a vaguely Scottish lip-reader. 


Of course, as a former poodle-walker myself, I found the message a little personal. 


Here's the whole sign: 

I really hope that last apostrophe is a typo and that they have more than one volunteer. These are lovely trails and there has to be a good group in town taking care of them. Although they wind through and around a golf course, the trails are mostly in the woods, so it was more like skiing through a forested glade than along a fairway.

To check it out for yourself, turn off Highway 61 onto County Road 2 at the eastern edge of Two Harbors, and drive just 0.7 miles north to the parking lot on the right. Just be sure ya ski and not walk on the trails. Especially if ya got a poodle.

Tough times for Two Harbors' Jacques

Jacques the giant roadside voyageur stood for years next to the Voyageur Motel along the Two Harbors strip. Now he lies in pieces next to the Earthwood restaurant, just a few yards off the Highway 61 expressway west of town. 

Back in town, his boots had been literally frozen to the ground. His head wobbled as the new owners tried to move him, and Jacques was literally decapitated in order to save him.

When I drove by the other day, the head was still nowhere to be seen. But the new restaurant owners have big plans to put Jacques back together, better than ever. He might even talk again. It's just a little gruesome right now.

Miss North Shore, please come home

What is the North Shore? What does it mean to live there? And...can saying you live here make it true?

The Lake County News Chronicle reported on a case of mistaken North Shore identity. The four contestents for the title of Miss North Shore listed their homes as Silver Bay, Two Harbors...and "Scenic Highway 61." The eventual winner, Caitlyn Thompson, was the person from the scenic highway. 

After some consideration by authorities, however, it was decided that Ms. Thompson did not actually live on the North Shore. She lives in a Twin Cities suburb, Vadnais Heights.


View Larger Map

Ms. Thompson's family has a summer vacation home in Holyoke. Holyoke is a small settlement in the Nemadji River area south of Jay Cooke State Park. You reach it off Highway 23, the scenic back route shortcut between Duluth and Sandstone. Holyoke is within 30 miles of Lake Superior, as the crow flies. But it's not really the North Shore.

So the title of Miss North Shore, and the $1000 scholarship, passed on to first runner-up Kimberly Jacobson of Two Harbors. 

I say, "Welcome to the North Shore, Ms. Thompson." Keep saying you live here, and eventually you really will. Holyoke isn't quite as North Shore cool as, say, Finland or Maple Hill, but it's close. We need more talented, energetic young people moving here. When Ms. Thompson finishes her nursing studies at St. Thomas, I bet there's a job for her in Grand Marais or Duluth.

I remember when I was in my early 20s, a lifelong resident of the Twin Cities but also a Boundary Waters guide and frequent North Shore explorer. At one point, I started telling people I lived in northern Minnesota. It took a few more years of actually living in Ely to make that true, but it was so important...and felt so good!...just to say it.

The rules of the beauty pageant may have ruled her not a real "Miss North Shore." But saying you live on the Shore, even when you're stuck in the suburbs, is the first step to making it true. 

Flood Bay: An appreciation

So you've made it through the stop-and-start traffic maze of Duluth and up the expressway to Two Harbors. Maybe you stopped for some smoked fish at Lou's or a Culvercinno at Culvers. Now, get your first real taste of the North Shore.

Just 1.5 miles past the last Two Harbors stoplight, turn right at Flood Bay State Wayside. There's a nice gravelly beach that reaches back toward Superior Shores resort, and you can walk the whole way. If you brought a sea kayak, you can launch it here.



If you like agates, you can find them here by the dozens: they are tiny but plentiful. There's a brand new interpretive plaque placed by the Minnesota Geological Society that explains our agates.

Flood Bay was named not for the water that crashes over the beach in a storm but for the Flood family that homesteaded here. Still, it's easy to imagine big November storms flooding over the beach and filling up the coastal wetlands behind the beach. Sit down at the water's edge; even on a calm day, there's enough wind and wave noise to drown out the sound of Highway 61.

This could be your own North Shore destination. Stay across the Highway at the mom-and-pop Flood Bay Motel; you'll appreciate the very affordable rates as well as the location.

When you've had your fill of this little bit of the North Shore, get back in your vehicle. No matter how far you have yet to go on the Shore, you have now arrived.

Thrillin' to Agate Bay

Ah, Agate Bay! Was ever a North Shore landmark more aptly named? The name makes me think of gravelly grit slithering under the foaming lip of a wave, bits of glassy agate shards glistening, maybe a herring gull rookery and the smell of wet lichen.



But the real, the only, North Shore Agate Bay is a thrill of another kind. Agate Bay is one of the two bays that make up...wait for it...Two Harbors. It's not exactly wavelets and lichen, more like the industrial link between the Iron Range and Lake Superior.



I had the opportunity to guide a few out-of-towners out on the breakwater that runs from the tip of Lighthouse Point out into Agate Bay. It's a one-of-a-kind North Shore experience, and not one to try on a stormy day. The sides drop off precipitously into deep,clear and cold Lake Superior, and there's only a cable railing.



The views are spectacular, both down the North Shore toward Knife River and into the harbor, where you get a rare view of ore boats at the docks.

My guests, from the Mott Foundation in Flint, Michigan, were impressed and only a little scared. One travels all the time for work, mostly to South America, and took the opportunity to leg it out on the flats. The other was more cautious, concerned about the drop-offs, wind and waves. Shortly after this outing, they informed the folks I'm working for that they'd get another two years of North Shore environmental funding. It must have been the walk across Agate Bay that convinced them.

To reach this unique North Shore spot, follow the signs off of Highway 61 in Two Harbors to the lighthouse. It's a turn toward the lake at the Dairy Queen. The route gets a little funky in downtown Two Harbors and through the Depot area.

Who's honking now?

I was really heartened to hear all the concern about the Honking Tree. This was a landmark white pine near the Two Harbors end of the expressway. To a lot of people, passing the Honking Tree was like passing a gateway, either to the wild North Shore or to their home town. Some person did a stupid, stupid thing.

For some insight into the mind of this sort of tree killer, read The Golden Spruce, by John Vaillant, about a very troubled guy who cut down a revered and unique spruce tree on, I think, Queen Charlotte Island.

Go another sixty miles up Highway 61, and the roadside trees are falling like dominos:



There's a four or five mile stretch of Highway 61, between Tofte and Lutsen, that's getting The Treatment this summer. The road will be widened, so there are two lanes of travel and wide shoulders on both sides. The Gitchi Gami bike trail will be built alongside. Actually, the road is moving "to the left", and the bike trail will be where the eastbound traffic lane is now.

So it will be safer, especially for bike riders. And a bit less wild. Roads, especially National Scenic Byways like this one, have to balance scenic quality and safety

If one tree falls, we may notice.

If a forest falls, we may not.

Why I love the North Shore, in full color

A picture is worth a thousand words. And even if I could write poetry, which I can't, a thousand words of love-poem verse wouldn't be enough to capture just how much I love LOVE LOVE having all this snow on the North Shore. All that dark blue and purple on these maps from Minnesota Climatogy Working Group practically make me salivate with lust for snow and ski trails.

If you're reading this in the orange or red or brown Twin Cities, please accept my condolences...and please start planning your last trip north for the ski season.

Even if you're stuck in Duluth, like I often am, don't let those green and blues get you down. There's plenty of snow here, especially after yesterday's storm. And a trip up Highway 61 gets you even more snow. Those blues get pretty dark starting around Two Harbors. Take a turn left up into the hills starting around Silver Bay and you are in blessed purple country. That's purple for snow depth of over two feet, not for the sticky late-season ski wax.

Enough talk of love...tomorrow I'm going skiing at Lutsen.

Walk Lake Walk

Everyone loves Duluth's Lakewalk. It's been such a joy as a resident of Duluth to see how both locals and tourists alike flock to the water's edge to enjoy parts or all of the three mile paved path along the lakeshore.

Unfortunately, it is treacherously icy right now. Before the blizzard really got going this weekend, it threw waves and freezing rain onto the shore. In fact, part of the Lakewalk near the Fitgers area has been closed due to damage from the storm.

If you want a little safer, less slippery Walk by the Lake, try the Sonju Trail in Two Harbors:

Funny from Texas

Check out this funny essay from a Texas columnist about his recent trip to Two Harbors and the rabid late-season mosquitoes. Based on his dateline, this must have been just two weeks ago that he had so many skeeters.

This was totally the summer of bugs for us, like the woods were full of frustrated larvae that had waited out two or three dry summers and then just cranked out the generations like mad to catch up.

I don't know how this writer's bug experience really was. I'm pretty accustomed to onslaughts of insects. But the fact that this was mid-October is pretty weird.

A break from the boys

Don't get me wrong, I love hiking with the boys. All else being equal, I'd rather hike with someone else than hike alone. But sometimes I just gotta go. So yesterday I just went, up to the Two Harbors area to scout two potential hikes for the upcoming hiking book.

I'm looking for new hikes, not the same old same old, not the ones that have been in other hiking guidebooks. And I found two good ones.

First is this new set of trails north and west of Two Harbors, in the Lake County Demo Forest.

The trail itself is fairly typical, with no great views and basic Superior Hiking Trail style construction. What puts it over the top though is a very nice interpretive guidebook, keyed to numbered signs around the trails.There are four loops, all intertwined; combining them all you get about a 3.2 mile hike. The guidebook goes into history, ecology, forest management and more.


The next "hike" was from the Burlington Bay camp-ground around Lighthouse Point, connecting the two "bays" of Two Harbors (Burlington and Agate).

It turns out that the Sonju Trail is just the beginning. The wide gravel or paved path is nice for kids on bikes or the elderly with strollers. But for the adventurous hiker, the official path is just an excuse to get to the unofficial, unmaintained trail right above the lakeshore...or to reach the breakwater with its wide surface inviting a stroll right out into Lake Superior.

The North Shore state park hiking club trail challenge picks up again this Thursday, with a multiple use attempt on the Split Rock Lighthouse State Park trail...one of the longest Hiking Club trails in the state!