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In summer and fall, don't rely on luck to get a reservation on Minnesota's North Shore.
In the heat of summer, everyone wants to bask in Lake Superior's cooling breezes. In fall, everyone wants to see the fall colors. In winter weekends, skiers flock in.
Below are a few of the many places to stay; reserve as far in advance as possible for popular dates, including Minnesota's
school break the third weekend of October. For an overview, see Introducing Minnesota's North Shore.
Long before reality shows turned survival into a stunt, there was John Beargrease.
With no fanfare and no road, the Ojibwe man delivered the weekly mail between Two Harbors and Grand Marais until 1899, using a dog team in winter. Using only four dogs to pull packs of up to 700 pounds, Beargrease could make the round-trip in a few days.
His stamina spawned a legend. For 25 years, mushers from around the nation have come to trace his path, racing each other from Duluth to the Gunflint Trail in the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon.
Big, bad Lake Superior.
It’s big as in vast, with a surface area equal to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
It’s bad as in lethal, able to swallow ore boats or pulverize them against the hard volcanic rock that lines its shore. And it’s treacherous — like an enraged bull, its crushing waves can turn on a dime.
In November 1905, the people of Minnesota saw Lake Superior at its most malevolent.
As dozens of ships left Duluth-Superior Harbor in the calm after a violent storm, an even worse storm hit, with blinding snow and winds of more than 60 mph. The 4,840-ton steel steamer Mataafa turned back and, just as it was about to slip into the harbor entry, was lifted by a giant wave, upended and smashed into first one concrete pierhead, then the other. Another wave whirled the 430-foot boat around and grounded it 600 feet off the beach, where mountainous waves cleaved its stern from its bow.
Ten thousand Duluthians, many of whom had watched two other boats founder hours earlier, kept vigil by the light of bonfires as the storm blew. On the Mataafa, 15 crewmen kept warm by a fire built in the captain’s bathtub. They were rescued the next day, but nine were lost — including four men who had lashed themselves to masts and frozen.
When you live in the frozen north, you may as well embrace winter.
My idea of fun is to cross-country ski, but for that, Mother Nature needs to bring snow. But alpine skiing, which I also like,
requires only some big snow guns.
After the first wimpy winter of the late '90s, I bought alpine skis. They cost a lot, but I can actually use them, unlike my
Nordic skis, all winter long.
After the second wimpy winter, I decided I might be using them a lot. So I called the ski school at Lutsen Mountains, on Minnesota's North Shore, and asked instructor Marcela Perez-Abreu how I could get over the “intermediate hump.’’
“That’s a tough plateau to break,’’ she said. “But you’re going to break it a lot easier and faster with some instruction.’’
During the heady days of the Roaring Twenties, a group of Duluth businessmen conceived a plan.
They would buy 3,300 acres of land along Lake Superior and on both sides of the Arrowhead River, encompassing beach, waterfalls and rocky gorges. They’d buy another 8,000 acres inland, where caribou still roamed and lakes were thick with fish and fowl. They’d build a clubhouse, with tennis courts and golf course and swimming pool. And they’d name the whole thing for Naniboujou, the powerful but benevolent Ojibwe spirit who claimed this northern wilderness as his own.
“If Naniboujou is your guide,’’ they wrote in the prospectus, “it is a smooth path through majestic groves, between rocky walls, over mossy ledges, through clumps of spruce that moose have nibbled . . . and to mysteries known only to those who belong.’’ There would be every comfort, and yet “simplicity and the charms of outdoor life must prevail.’’
In Minnesota’s state parks, the goodies go way beyond hiking trails, picnic sites and fishing piers.
There are mines, caves, battle sites, mills, historic homes and a lighthouse to explore; there are sleighs to ride and canoes to rent and trails to ski on by candlelight. And people can stay in these state parks, too, not just in tents but in guesthouses and suites.
The fancier lodgings are popular, such as Itasca’s historic lodge suites, with their gold-tone faucets and lace doilies,
and the new Itasca suites, with their color televisions and computer hookups.
On the North Shore, it’s a happy day when snow is as abundant as scenery.
Despite its miles of cross-country ski trails, the western shore of Lake Superior gets only modest amounts of lake-effect snow, because the storms that do blow in from the east tend to dump it inland, where the land mass is colder.
It took me nearly 20 years of hiking on the North Shore to tackle Eagle Mountain.
It’s the highest point in Minnesota, but it’s not exactly on the shore; it’s 14 miles inland, as the crow flies. I was used to tramping along the rocky river gorges whose horehound-tinted waters rivers boil furiously down to Lake Superior; I was used to drama.
But the 3½-mile hike up 2,301-foot Eagle Mountain was just as dramatic. The path, a root-choked corridor through cedars and spruce, soon enters the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Passing through bogs, partly on boardwalks, it skirts mirrorlike Whale Lake, then picks its way through gantlets of rock up to the top, where hikers gaze upon a spectacular panorama that includes the North Fork of the Cascade River and Zoo, Shrike and Eagle lakes, set amid waves of greens and yellow.
A hundred years ago, Grand Marais was a wind-buffeted outpost at the tip of the North Shore, stomping grounds of trappers, loggers and fishermen. The dirt road connecting the village to Duluth often was impassable, and winter provisions had to be brought in by steamer before Lake Superior iced over.
But amid the hardship, there was always art.
Swedish immigrant Anna Johnson was first to create and sell art, at the log trading post she operated with her husband after their 1907 marriage. Trained at Augustana College in Rockford, Ill., she painted, drew and worked in stained glass, leather and ceramics. Some of her many oils now hang in a log replica of her store, the Johnson Heritage Post Gallery.
Only tough guys lasted for long around Lake Superior, and Father Frederic Baraga was one of them. The Slovenian priest arrived in 1831 and spent a long and frenetic life canoeing and snowshoeing between Ojibwe settlements in Sault Ste. Marie, Grand Portage and La Pointe.
One day in 1846, Father Baraga, learning of a possible epidemic among the Ojibwe in Grand Portage, set out from Madeline Island in a small boat with an Ojibwe guide. A terrible storm arose, but they were blown over a sandbar and into the quiet mouth of the Cross River, where the town of Schroeder is today. In thanksgiving, they erected a small wooden cross at the site, later replaced by a granite one.
The Snowshoe Priest, who compiled an Ojibwe dictionary in his spare time, became the first bishop of Upper Michigan and lived until 1868. He's buried in the 1890 Romanesque cathedral of Marquette, where efforts are under way to canonize him.
If you’re a bargain-hunter — and most Midwesterners are — the best weeks of summer are in August.
By the second week, football and band practice has started at schools, and back-to-school sales are in progress. In Minnesota, everyone wants to go to the State Fair.
Not many people are thinking about vacation — which is precisely why it’s a great time to take one. The weather is still warm and sunny, the crowds are gone and, best of all, prices drop, usually on the second or third Sunday.
Ten thousand years ago, the melting of Minnesota’s last glacier transformed a placid beach into a rugged coast.
It’s a 150-mile stretch of wild beauty, lined by piles of jagged black basalt, cobblestone beaches and the mouths of dozens of rivers, tumbling down from the old beaches of Glacial Lake Duluth. Seven state parks follow their winding gorges, marked by rapids and waterfalls, and the Superior Hiking Trail crosses them on its way from Duluth to the Canadian border.
This is Minnesota’s breathing space, to which tourists return like spawning salmon, year after year, or whenever we need to fill our lungs with brisk Lake Superior air. We can’t swim in the water — it’s about 40 degrees, even in summer — but we can look at the views and walk through the forests, and we do.
Most guided adventure trips cost quite a lot. If you're prepared to pay, great; if not, you have options.
If you want to hike the Superior Hiking Trail on Minnesota's North Shore, for example, you can pay up to $379 per day, per person, or as little as $40 per day. Here's how it works out:
Once, passenger trains crisscrossed the state, and lighthouses guided sailors on the Great Lakes.
Trains and lighthouses are beloved relics now, symbols of a simpler past. In the iPod era, they seem antique, like Grandpa's buggy or Grandma's butter churn.
But don't relegate them to history's dustbin just yet.
Every week, a few dozen people join an exclusive club high above Minnesota's North Shore.
To get there, they lug all their food and gear 1¾ miles up and down a steep hill. They draw their own water and make their own fires. They clean and then lug their garbage over the same hill.
And they consider themselves lucky.
Going hiking on the Superior Hiking Trail? You'll want to pack sturdy boots, thick socks, water bottles, maps and rain gear.
Oh, and don't forget the bikes.
There's a new trail on the North Shore, a nice flat one, too. It's the paved Gitchi-Gami, with a 17½-mile stretch that links Gooseberry Falls to Split Rock State Park and Silver Bay Bay and a 6½-mile stretch that links Schroeder to Temperance River State Park and Tofte.
Long before Minnesota existed, Grand Portage was as familiar a name to many Europeans as George Washington.
As the American Revolution drew to a close in the East, traders at this Lake Superior outpost were busy minting the interior's first millionaires. It was the crossroads of a continent, the place where voyageurs laden with goods from Montreal met voyageurs laden with beaver pelts from the Canadian wilderness.
Then, it was time for Rendezvous, where the French-Canadian paddlers cut loose while their Scottish bosses traded — making money hand over fist for shareholders of the North West Co., one of the first modern corporations.
Twenty years ago, dining on the North Shore was pleasant, if a little utilitarian. A meal often came with a view, but most of the menus had the same fish, steak, chops and burgers you could get anywhere.
Things have changed. One Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I ate at three of my favorite places and two newer ones, one of
which definitely was worth a detour. A three-star culinary weekend on the North Shore — who knew?
On old Highway 61 between Duluth and Two Harbors, the cheery New Scenic Cafe is a fixture of fine dining. I had my usual, the pistachio-crusted goat-cheese salad, with a starter of sashimi tuna tacos, but I was a little envious of my husband's salmon, which came with wild rice so savory I made the server ask the chef how he prepared it — and I don't really like wild rice. We finished with a slice of one of the restaurant's renowned pies, raspberry-rhubarb, warm and topped with vanilla ice cream.
On the northeast tip of Minnesota is a coastline of uncommon beauty, lined by sheer basalt cliffs, cobblestone beaches and the mouths of dozens of rivers rushing into Lake Superior through narrow, winding gorges.
This is where Minnesotans go to breathe.
Since 1924, when the first highway opened, the North Shore has been a refuge for city folk tired of congestion, for farmers tired of flat fields, for blue-collar workers tired of the grind. It didn't cost much to come up for a week, rent a little cabin and breathe deeply of air laced with the fragrance of cedar, pine and freshwater waves.
In winter, ice comes with the territory. You can curse it — or you can play with it.
Kids know how. Climbers and skaters know how. And skiers know how — to stay away from it, that is, at least when they have waxed planks on their feet.
One New Year's Day, after an ice storm turned northern Wisconsin ski trails into screaming luge runs, I cut short a ski weekend and headed home through glazed forest. But Amnicon Falls State Park was on the way, so I stopped to explore.
In the north woods, it's easy to fall in love with sled dogs.
They're exuberant and adorable but also focused, intense and explosive — sort of like kindergartners crossed with Olympic athletes.
For huskies, life is simple: They live to run. Anyone who has watched the start of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon has witnessed the drive of a husky, a four-legged Ferrari that snaps into warp speed at the rustle of a harness. And anyone who has seen the dogs along the trail will be struck by their apparent deep satisfaction at spending hour after hour running and pulling.