Sunrise Duluth Harbor Sept. 25, 2014. As you can see the sun did not show up but any day in Duluth is a good day! As soon as it got brighter out the red light shut off in the north lighthouse.
We always stop at Lester Park in Duluth. This stone arch bridge spans the Lester River and is so photogenic.
Beaver River flows down from the hill towards Lake Superior and runs through the city of Beaver Bay.
Glen Avon Falls is up the Beaver River a few miles from Hwy 61/North Shore Drive. It has many sets of cascades, rapids and falls. This is a new one for me and it was awesome. I met another photographer from the twin cities there and he was photographing it for the first time also.
Illgen Falls is located in Tettegouche State Park. It is near a camper cabin on Hwy 1 and is not easily accessible. I had to climb along a cliff to get this angle but it was well worth it!
Manitou Falls is located in George H. Crosby Manitou State Park and is only accessible from Lake Superior. It is not well known but well worth the effort to get there!
Cross River Falls
Temperence River
Temperence River Foam Swirls
Splitrock Lighthouse Sunrise
On Friday Sept. 26, the sun finally showed up and we drove to the Caribou Trail to the SHT trailhead. We hiked up the STEEP trail to White Sky Rock and photographed Caribou Lake.
Then on the way back we took the trail to Lake Agnes, thanks Paul Sundberg! It was a fairly challenging trail with one section requiring climbing up a log with steps cut into it along with a railing made of smaller logs. Of course when we got there it was amazing! I met a painter from Minneapolis who had hiked in that morning and was camping down below. He was set up with his painting supplies at the overlook and had a good start painting the scene that I was photographing. A great afternoon in the north woods for sure!
Trail to Lake Agnes
Hygrocybe coccinea
This photo is from Tettegouche State Park. It's an overlook of Tettegouche Lake with Lake Superior in the distance. It was an easy 1.8 mile hike gradually climbing the first mile on a wide root-free path. The entrance we choose was on the back side of the park on Lax Lake Road. We went in at 4pm and were treated to a perfect view. Thanks go to Paul Sundberg for his photo on his website from this location. It was the inspiration for this hike. There are 23+ miles of trails in this park and is full of these maple covered hills. I can't wait until next year so we can explore deeper into the interior of this park!
We left for our north shore vacation on Wednesday Sept 24th at 4pm. I check the aurora borealis forecast everyday and it is very rare to see them in SW Minnesota. The forecast was at a k4 for the north shore on Fri. Sept. 26th so it was in the back of my mind. Friday night at 10pm, there were reports starting to come in of northern lights sightings so I left the hotel and went to Palisade Head to find a good viewing location. The gate up to the top was locked so I stayed in the lower parking lot. This photo was one of the first ones I took after my test shots at ISO 6400. This was a 5 1/2 min exposure at f2.8 at ISO 100. There was a fair amount of traffic so I decided to go to a darker location but I didn't know of any off-hand so I came back to Palisade Head.
Watching the aurora is so mesmerizing and exciting and relaxing all at the same time. At midnight I was thinking about calling it a night and all of a sudden at 12:21am the lights started to dance and pulse and intensify quite a bit. There were red and orange pillars shooting up out of the green.
I spent the next hour trying different compositions and ISO/shutter speeds and this is the best of the night. What a great way to cap off our last night on the north shore!
