Outdoors
Duluth featured on Gear Junkie website
Gear Junkie, a Minneapolis-based online publication for outdoor adventure news and product reviews, published a feature on Duluth this week as part of its series on “The Great Urban Outdoors.”
Selective Focus: Northern Lights
We sure do love our auroras up here. There are predictions of moderate activity tonight and Saturday according to the internet experts and local astronomical legend Astro Bob.
The week of Sept. 17-23, Night Sky Week will be taking place in Duluth. Click here for more information and a schedule of events. The project is organized by Starry Skies Lake Superior, a group raising awareness of the effects of light pollution.
One of the main events will be a showing of the movie Skyglow. The trailer below is pushing some product pretty hard, but there are stunning images in it. (more…)
Shrooming in Duluth’s Lake Place Park
A notable fairy ring of large white puffballs, ending with the biggest ‘shroom I’ve ever seen, bigger than a basketball or a human head. Lake Place Park.
Hansi Johnson’s “Photo that Won’t Die”
It was shot just a few hundred feet from Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge, but it evokes the spirit of being in a far more remote part of the planet. Hansi Johnson’s “photo that won’t die” is so-named because in recent years it’s been in Outside magazine, the Red Bulletin, the Italian news magazine Panorama, a few calendars and as Johnson notes, it’s “been ripped off and passed around more times than I care to admit.”
Add two more to the list: Men’s Journal recently included the image among its “25 Best Adventure Photos of the Past 25 Years.” The back cover of a new book from Outside magazine, “The Edge of the World,” also features the image. (more…)
The Weird Thing
What is… The Weird Thing? It can be seen bobbing up and down in the water just off Duluth’s Lakewalk, between Fitger’s and the Vietnam Memorial. Could it be… the 125-year-old ruins of Duluth’s first breakwater wall? Spoiler Alert: (more…)
SUP Yoga on Lake Superior
I teamed up with Padma Yoga teacher Emily Ostos to make this. Stand Up Paddleboard supplied by Duluth SUP.
Searching for a Distressed Citizen’s Lost Glasses in Lester River
I got a distress call the other day. A citizen fan of my Lake Superior Aquaman page wrote me saying, “While swimming in the Lester River (at the spot where it’s like a little swimming hole, right before the first bridge that leads to the park) my husband dived off one of the rocks and lost his glasses. Another younger boy lost his goggles… what are the chances that they fell into the bottom of the hole made by the waterfall? We tried to go down but I couldn’t see or hold my breath that long lol.” So I offered to help, for am I not … Lake Superior Aquaman? (more…)
Pollywog Party in Canoe Country
While paddling the border lakes in canoe country, Dawn LaPointe and Gary Fiedler of Radiant Spirit Gallery came upon a treasure of tadpoles at a portage landing. (more…)
Dog Cam
I met Dozer and his owner Ian yesterday at Duluth’s epic rock beach, the Ledges. Ian’s buddy was also named Ian, and in addition to jumping off rocks as shown, he instagrams here @ILVisuals. Dozer was remarkable for his enthusiasm for swimming and for biting waves.
Deeper Fish Cam
Not much happened for 45 minutes at 15+ feet deep, but I did get this. Going back today! This is the area shown in this video where there is a channel between two giant boulders. I wedged the camera-on-a-stick between some rocks and left it there. Lots of boat traffic not too far away and that is the noise you hear. Fish Cam pt. 1 here.
Tree Life
My favorite tree in Duluth hangs right over the lake at the water’s edge, down below Leif Erikson Park. It’s a great place to bring a cup of coffee and get some living done.
Fish Cam
I saw a family of mergansers diving in shallow water (~18 inches deep) by these rocks where I’d seen little fish before. After the birds had gone, I set my camera down there for an hour and 40 minutes in three different locations. Here I have condensed all the fish that swam by = three minutes of footage. If you wonder what mergansers eat, this is like a drive-thru restaurant for them. I would appreciate any help with identifications, there are at least 4-5 species represented.
Responding to a comment about how some of the fish seem curious about the camera, part of the reason may be it is simply blocking their way. This area of interspersed boulders is a maze-like bunch of trails for them to zoom around in all day. To keep my camera from floating, I had to pile rocks on top of it, essentially blocking one of their thoroughfares. Several fish come up to it in transit and squeeze over top of it or around, others turn back and go the way they came, adjusting their regular routes.
Lastly I will add that several times, pairs of fish (I don’t know what kind they are) seem to be playing. I think these may be the same pairs each time they appear. I have named the most prominent ones Herbert and Gerbert.
Dead Chipmunk Floats By
Spent all day setting up the underwater camera to get the mergansers diving in the area, but they were pretty uncooperative. Then this dead chipmunk floated by, so the day wasn’t a total waste haha. Anyway you can see what I’d wager is a talon wound on its side. Chipmunks live (and die I guess) all along the water’s edge, I frequently hear their signature chirping. Lots of vegetal flotsam in the water today too.
Exploring Madeline Island’s Rocky Shore
Wading/rock-hopping up Madeline Island’s beautiful bay shore of sandstone boulders. My little love letter to the island.
PDD Quiz: Parks of Duluth
The summer weather is upon us and the outdoors are calling. Duluth is home to 133 parks and green spaces, according to the city of Duluth website. How many parks can you identify from photographs and brief descriptions? Fire up the quiz and find out!
Our next quiz, reviewing June happenings, will be posted on June 25. E-mail question suggestions to Alison Klawiter at [email protected] by June 22.
North Country Trail in Wisconsin: Wood Tick Flats
You can’t start hiking the North Country Trail at the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin without first hiking in from one direction or the other. If you want to go southeast through Wisconsin, for example, you need to start on Wild Valley Road in Minnesota and hike in for 3.2 miles.
I don’t know how far into Wisconsin you’ll get if you try that. As of the date of this post, the interactive map on northcountrytrail.org is unclear. It’s hard to tell if the trail ends cold in the woods, dumps out on a highway or carries on uninterrupted.
On the gorgeous Sunday afternoon of June 4, I tried to solve this mystery and failed. It was still a fun scouting mission, though, and that’s what I’ll share in this essay. Obviously I could call the trail association or maybe spend an hour scrolling through Facebook posts to obtain the knowledge I seek about the state of the trail, but I’d still want to see it for myself, so why bother with the hands-off research, right?
It has been thoroughly documented in a series of 14 essays on this very website that I slowly and somewhat methodically hiked all of Minnesota’s Superior Hiking Trail in sporadic spurts from 2000 to 2016. That journey started at the Canadian border and ended on the Wisconsin border. But the trail doesn’t stop at either of those points. The SHT is part of a much longer trail — the North Country National Scenic Trail — which extends to Lake Sakakawea State Park in North Dakota to the west and Crown Point in New York to the east. (more…)
Drone footage from the North Shore of Lake Superior
Twin Cities videographer Matt Smith of Odyssey Visuals recently took a quick weekend trip up the North Shore and captured these images from his drone.
Fly Fishing for Brookies
Friends Alyssa and Max play hooky with brookies. Alyssa is also teaching fly tying at the Beer ‘n’ Bugs event at Bent Paddle.
Piedmont Plunge
Often helmet-cam videos of mountain bike runs have a music soundtrack. This one by Baylor Litsey, shot on the Piedmont Mountain Bike Trails in Duluth, sticks with the natural sounds for a more realistic glimpse of the trail-riding experience.
Memorial Day Northern Lights Real Time Video
Richard Hoeg captures the sights of the Northern Lights and sounds of loons in the distance in this video shot over Little Stone Lake, about 40 miles northeast of Duluth. The video was taken on Hoeg’s Sony A6000 with an ISO setting of 3,200.