North Shore Lake Superior Minnesota

Well greetings all and welcome. In this video we're going to be exploring the north shore of Lake Superior using Highway 61. Highway 61 runs out of Duluth, Minnesota all along the north shoreline all the way up to the Canadian border at Grand Portage. So I spent the weekend with my buddy Wiley from the Duluth area. He drove most of the weekend in his jeep so I've got a bunch of footage that I just put together so I'm just kind of giving an introduction here. I didn't do the best job of narrating but yeah I'll put all the footage together for you guys. We basically stayed at a state forest campground and used that as a home base right off of Highway 61. I'll show the camp site at the end of the video and then we went all the way up to Grand Portage right at the Canadian border and then worked our way down the shoreline and saw as much as we could. There's a lot of state parks. There's a lot of rivers that run into Lake Superior so there's a ton of waterfalls and a few small towns that are kind of scenic tourist type attraction places. So we'll show you what we saw and bring you guys along and I hope you enjoy the video. Scenic overlook half mile on the right. Maybe we should stop. Want to do this scenic overlook here on the right? into Canada there but we're actually crossing the highway here. This is Grand Portage State Park entrance. There's a walking path that takes you up to High Falls. That's where we're headed. Okay so this is the Pigeon River here in the state park and this is pretty much the international border. That's Canada right there. Yeah I can see some folks fishing over there on the other side. into Judge Magney State Park. We're going to do a hike here Devil's Kettle which are waterfalls correct? Yeah. So we're going to go find the trailhead do this hike. We'll bring you guys along. That'd be where we're going. Okay so this is only a two mile round trip hike but it's supposed to be pretty strenuous. A lot of steps. It said close to 200 steps and this is the Brule River and we're going to see Devil's Kettle Falls. Nice shot of the Brule River. It makes its way right into Lake Superior. Okay the descent begins. We've got a lot of stairs down then we'll be at the falls and then a lot of stairs up. It's the down that gets me on the steps. I do have compression knee braces. It's my left knee. It really gives me trouble but we're gonna give it heck. Away we go. Okay so it looks like about halfway there is a lower set of falls. We go down and then back up to the Devil's Kettle but let's go check out the lower set of falls. So here we are. We made it the Devil's Kettle. So here it's kind of hard to see from this angle. There's a big kind of kettle there and it comes out meets this other fall. There's another falls. It is a long fast drop down. There was just a young girl jumping around on these rocks right here all slippery. Playing with death young lady. Okay and here comes our big set of stairs. I'm not going to count them. I'm going to trust that it's close to 200. It didn't seem that bad coming down. Honestly it's usually my knees that bother me on the way down so going up probably get me huffing and puffing but you just take your time. It's totally worth it. Yeah this must have been quite a project building these steps here. These staircases. This one coming up around this next turn is the big long steep one. Kind of intimidating. Wiley's getting a head start on me. See if I ended up passing him up. Pretty spot. The sign out here is saying that at one time this whole all across was a big waterfall. Now just barely see they call it the hidden falls in there. We'll walk up see if we can get a little closer and see a waterfall in there. See somebody's bobber dangling there. Well I did wonder why there's no falls here anymore. It says when the last mile high glacier melted water filled Lake Superior to almost 600 feet above present level. So once that glacier is melted no more falls here. This was all falls coming down these rocks. Okay so we're up above the hidden falls that I showed from down below. It's very nice that they have these rock walls. Makes it a little bit Superior hiking trail. I haven't seen many through hikers. Saw one couple so far on one of the trails. We have this bridge here that goes over the temperance and the waterfalls. Hey that's what I was just doing. And we're going to go downstream across highway 61. We have another bridge and you can see Lake Superior from there. Okay so it's just a short hike up that rugged deep gorge and then when you get to the top here this is the calm before the storm. This is the temperance river flowing nice and calmly and then it hits this first drop here and just keeps dropping into that deep gorge that we followed on the way up. These girls are over here getting ready for their Instagram shots. Selfies. Okay so now we're going down the outlet of the temperance river. The other side of the highway. So we'll get a shot of Lake Superior and the temperance river running right into it. We got a nice boardwalk here. We're starting to lose our clear skies. I was just commenting how good the video and photos are looking with the sun out. You just get such better color. Things are going to get a little duller here but still really pretty. We've got this cool bridge here that crosses over the outlet of the temperance river and then you get to see the Lake Superior there. There it goes. The end of its long run. I don't know how long of a river the temperance is. Giant Lake Superior. There's the bridge up there. That's highway 61. That goes along the whole north shore of Superior. It's a lot of stops like this where you can just get off at the wayside parking area and take a short walk to see cool stuff like this. Okay so the next stop here we're in Grand Marais, Minnesota which is a north shore town. This is kind of a bigger definitely touristy town here along the north shore as you continue up towards the Canadian border. So we'll turn it around give you a shot. They have a little harbor here in the marina and quite a few places to eat, shops. They've got a campground right here on the marina or on the harbor. So yeah we'll take a look. So they do have a public access water spot here. You kind of have to drive through the campground to get to it. And then as we pan over here you start to see all the shops and restaurants, hotels and all that. There is a lighthouse as we swing around the other side here. I'll zoom in on that. Oh a big sailboat out there coming in. That looks cool. But really enjoying taking the time to explore the north shore here. We're gonna get ready to move on here. Okay so here's a little roadside attraction for you. This is actually on Google Maps. It's marked Chuck Wiggers or Wiggers Treasures and it is just... I'm gonna cross the road here and not get hit. It is just a bunch of driftwood and stuff, rocks that he's just got piled and the more you stare at it the more you see. Glass bottles, little figurines, there's a wolf, there's a fox right in there, Canadian flag, all these roots and driftwood. It is quite the sight. And then there is a house back in here and it looks like he obviously does not mind people stopping. It's the attraction. There's a little path going through the yard that looks like you're welcome to walk through but I'm just gonna do the roadside here. There's this wolf in a goal there. Quite a few wolves. And there's like some mannequins. This guy up here with his shades and ball cap. A little doll there in the center of the screen. Just a bunch of junk. The years that it must have taken to get it to this point. I'm sure he started with one little pile and just kept piling it all on. There's a snowboard in there, front end of a snowmobile, all these little dolls and stuff. There's Frosty the snowman over there somewhere. There he is. Wild. That's something to do with your time. Wow, there's definitely a lot of wolves. It's up to over 10 of these wolf statues. Nice be kind sign up there. And yeah, you can see his place behind there and then there's a garage. There's actually some pretty precariously stacked stacks of rocks there. Definitely kind of a wolf theme. I've counted over a dozen wolves. Wolves. A couple moose up there. Looks like a bear. Pardon the road noise, but it is right here on Highway 61. There's an otter right center screen there. An otter. The wolf behind him. Another wolf over here. Another wolf howling here in the middle of the screen. I didn't notice the love in the stones there the first time. Yeah, it goes back. It's deep. It's just layers and layers. Even behind the garage and house, there's more stuff. Okay, we made one last stop here at Cascade River State Park. Checking out the Cascade Falls. Just a short little walk in. There is a shot of the campsite here. It's really just a place to crash for the night. We were out all day. We got going at 7 30 this morning. It is now 9 p.m. We're not even going to have a campfire. Just call it a night and get an early start in the morning.