The Easy-Walking Travel series of guidebooks has expanded to the United States, starting with Lake Superior’s North Shore in Minnesota. See woods and waterfalls, beaches and breweries, shops, ships, and rugged shoreline, all stretching along the world’s most expansive freshwater lake up to the border with Canada. Everything from sights to hotels to local activities is covered here with ease-of-access in mind.
Each chapter bursts with travel information for a section of the North Shore—Duluth, Lower Highway 61, and Upper Highway 61—including a possible travel plan (if you want detailed guidance on what to do) and information about transportation, lodging, and sightseeing in each area. Pages of photographs allow readers to see for themselves what to expect in terms of challenges and rewards (black/white only). (Excerpt below.)
If the heart is young but the legs no longer are, this is the travel guide for you!
Excerpt: Easy-Walking North Shore
Lower Highway 61
Overview
Highway 61 is the main land route between Duluth and Canada. Running right along Lake Superior, it is as scenic a drive as you could wish for. In Duluth, Interstate 35 ends where Highway 61 begins, at London Road. If you are leaving Duluth, just follow the signs for the North Shore.
The lower part of the North Shore, in Lake County, is prime tourist country. It provides views and access to Lake Superior, beaches, forests, hills, hiking trails, waterfalls, and lighthouses. Two Harbors, just a half hour away from Duluth on the expressway, makes a convenient base to explore the area, but lodging is available up and down the shoreline.
If you have the time, drive to Two Harbors on Old Highway 61, now marked Scenic Drive (also Congdon Blvd.)—not the four-lane expressway that parallels it. On the way, you’ll pass Tom’s Logging Camp (museum and trading post), Stoney Point Drive (take the short detour to hunt rocks on the shoreline, if your schedule allows), and the very small towns of French River, Palmers, Knife River, and Larsmont. After about 25 miles you arrive in Two Harbors. While only one harbor is active these days, Two Harbors does have two bays, each of which provides its own entertainments.
Agate Bay is the southern one and is busy with laker traffic, as the giant boats enter the bay and take on their loads of taconite iron ore pellets. A long, easily-accessible breakwater stretches into the bay for excellent views of the three docks and the ship traffic. One lighthouse stands at the end of the breakwater, and another stands on land. Nearby Burlington Bay to the northeast offers a beach, a campground, and a park. The Sonju Trail, partially along the waterfront, connects the two bays.
Beyond Two Harbors, Highway 61 takes you to Castle Danger, Beaver Bay, Silver Bay and Little Marais before crossing into what is labeled in this book as “Upper Highway 61,” which is covered in the next chapter.
In Two Harbors, visit the R.J. Houle Information Center (the log cabin with the huge “Lake County” Adirondack chair out front) on Highway 61 near Burlington Bay for tourist information about much of the North Shore and elsewhere in the “arrowhead” of NE Minnesota.
Highway 61 and the North Shore lie on a decidedly SW-NE axis. While visitors think they are traveling “north” toward Canada, the locals all say that’s east (because of the highway’s diagonal orientation). The lake is to the south. To the north is generally forest.
from Easy-Walking North Shore (Lake Superior), ©2021 by Elizabeth Bingham