Minnesota North Shore - Fall Color 2022

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At last, we visited the North Shore when there wasn’t snow on the ground!

We returned a few days ago from a wonderful trip up to Lake Superior’s North Shore. This is our third trip visiting this area. Our past trips include once during the polar vortex of 2021 and a second time in early spring this year. The timing of our previous trips meant that waterfalls were frozen and we skipped many hiking trails either due to extreme cold or unsafe conditions. So as you might imagine, we were very excited to see the area without snow.

Over the years, I’ve seen many wonderful photos taken of the brilliant fall colors in this area. The Minnesota DNR has a fantastic page (https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/fall_colors/typical_peak.html) showing typical fall color ranges for the state as well as descriptions on what causes the different colors. I used this information to guide the timing of our visit.

I am a map nerd, so I pulled the fall color map for today (October 1) and the two previous years on the same date from the DNR’s fall color maps page. As you can see, fall color is a bit behind this year compared to previous years.

In this trip report, I’ll take you through a few places that we visited each day. Our main goal was to visit places that we had previously skipped over due to cold and snow. This trip was short and there was a lot we tried to pack in! That just means we’ll have to visit again next summer/fall :-).

I hope you enjoy the images and reading about our trip.

Locations Highlighted

Palisade Head
Caribou Falls
Artist’s Point
Oberg Mountain
Cascade Falls
Lake Superior shoreline
Gunflint Trail
Superior National Forest

Photography Gear

I took most of the photos shown below on my Sony A7RIII (Amazon) using our Sigma 24-70mm lens (Amazon). Any other images were taken on my cellphone. Camera settings are captioned below all photos taken with the Sony camera.

Day 1 - September 25

We drove up to Duluth in the morning and spent the afternoon lazily making our way toward Grand Marais. We attempted to stop at Gooseberry State Park, but WOW was it busy! The parking lot was packed, so we abandoned that idea and instead drove to Palisade Head. When we stopped here during the polar vortex of 2021, we had to park below and hike up the road. This year, we were fortunate to park in the upper parking lot. It was pretty busy, but the parking lot size helps control how many people can be there at any given time. There is a small overlook area with a rock half wall. We saw a couple of rock climbers taking advantage of the beautiful weather conditions to scale the shear cliff. If you have a fear of heights, I do not recommend going down to the little overlook. The view of Lake Superior from right above the overlook is really just as nice.

Our next stop was a hike I have been wanting do to for the last couple of years — Caribou Falls. When we pulled into the parking lot, we noticed that some scattered thunderstorms popping up on the radar. We decided to chance it and are glad we did! The trail is relatively short, at just over a mile roundtrip. The waterfall is beautiful! There were just a few other people when we arrived. We spent about 30 minutes here before the rain and thunder started. It was a bit magical walking through the forest on the way back with the light rain and thunder rumbling.

Some time later we arrived at our AirBNB and headed out to Artist’s Point for sunset and had a beautiful evening exploring the rocky shore.

Day 2 - September 26

When you are staying near Grand Marais, it is hard to not want to do every sunrise and sunset at Artist’s Point. It is just so easy to get to and provides many opportunities for different perspectives of the lighthouse, the harbor, and the rocky shore. On this morning we explored the east side of the harbor.

After sunrise, we picked up breakfast at World’s Best Donuts in Grand Marais and hit the road to do an early morning hike. The area around Lutsen was showing the most fall color, so we decided to hike up Oberg Mountain. This is an extremely popular hike. Normally we wouldn’t pick such a popular hike, but it was our first time on this trail, so we had to see what all the fuss was about. This is a 2.3 mile lollipop trail. The trail took us uphill through forests before starting the loop around Oberg Mountain. There were several nice overlooks on this trail that gave us amazing views of Lake Superior, the Superior National Forest, and Oberg Lake. We started the hike with a little bit of sunshine and ended with mostly cloudy conditions. It was VERY windy on the north side of the trail that morning.

After our hike, I got a coffee at Fika Coffee in Lutsen and we drove around some of the backroads. We almost did the short hike up to White Sky Rock, but the sky conditions were not great, so we decided to save it for another trip.

The highlight of the afternoon was our stop at Cascade Falls. There is a really nice loop trail that follows Cascade River and shows off multiple waterfalls. It was a really fun area to explore with several nice vantage points. We ended our afternoon with an early dinner at Angry Trout Cafe (highly recommend!).

We went back to Artist’s Point for what ended up being a stunning sunset. We also got to witness Hjørdis sailing along the shore.

Day 3 - September 27

Our last full day on the North Shore was all about visiting new places (with the exception of sunset — I’ll give you one guess). We set out early for a sunrise along Lake Superior. There were some clouds blocking the horizon, so we didn’t get a ton of color, but it was still a beautiful sunrise. It was a bit chilly on this morning, but we luckily had some trees blocking the wind and had the place to ourselves!

After sunrise, we stopped in Grand Marais to get my first Java Moose coffee of the trip. They were closed the previous 2 days when we were in town, so I was very excited to get into my favorite North Shore coffee shop. With my warm coffee in hand, we headed up the Gunflint Trail to explore roads that were previously inaccessible to us due to snow. By the time we reached Poplar Lake, the temperature had dropped to about 38°F (3.3°C) and there were flurries in the air! It didn’t last long, but it was an unexpected sight. Back down on the shore that afternoon, temperatures were back into the mid-50’s and it was beautiful and sunny.

With the skies basically clear for sunset, we opted to wander around at Artist’s Point again with no real objective other than to explore. The clear skies weren’t ideal for sunset, but they were great for stars. I was amazed at how clear the skies were. We could see an incredible amount of stars. Jess took a time-lapse of the stars that night. Keep an eye on his instagram for that one!

Lake Superior - StephCoffmanPhoto — Lake Superior shoreline
32mm, ISO 100, f/22, 0.4 sec

Artist's Point - StephCoffmanPhoto — Sunset at Artist’s Point
24mm, ISO 100, f/18, 1/30 sec

Day 4 - September 28

Our last day arrived too soon. There are so many other places we would have loved to explore on this trip, but they will have to wait for another time. We spent sunrise at Artist’s Point before making a final visit to Java Moose for my delicious oat mocha. Our big objective was to time our drive back so that we ended up in Duluth for an early lunch at Great Harvest Bread Co. We are obsessed with their smoked turkey sandwich.

On our way to Duluth, we stopped at a Lutsen Ski Resort overlook and a couple of backroads in the Superior National Forest to check out the fall color one last time. The maples were really starting to turn in some spots.

We briefly stopped at Tettegouche State Park and Split Rock Lighthouse, hoping to take a few videos for our Travel Atmos content, but the conditions were a bit bland. Instead, I dunked my phone in Lake Superior to video underwater and swiftly got my shoes soaked by a wave — a good way to end the trip I guess.

We had such a great time exploring the North Shore, yet again!

Thanks for reading!

:: Self-promo ::

I have several North Shore prints for sale at my Etsy shop! I plan to add a few from this trip very soon.

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Minnesota North Shore - Fall Color 2022

Day 1 - September 25

Day 2 - September 26

Day 3 - September 27

Day 4 - September 28

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