Duluth, Lake Superior + I Made a Movie!

I was finally able to explore Duluth and Lake Superior this week—my last week in Minnesota! Dave and I made a whole day of it and I even compiled a fun movie with our adventures.

If you’re visiting the area…these are some places you will want to check out!

 

Heading “Up North” to Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin

If you’ve ever lived in the twin cities or know anyone who lives in the twin cities (which is Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota for those of you who don’t know), everyone “goes up north” various weekends throughout the year. Most of the city folk (yup I just said city folk) own cabins “up north” or just know that things up north are more scenic and relaxing.

 

(picture taken at Grandma’s Saloon + Grill. more on that later.)

The whole two years I’ve lived in Minnesota, my trips away from the twin cities have mostly consisted of visiting family in Nebraska (PS I should seriously be packing because we move to Nebraska in three freaking days!!) so I sadly hadn’t done any sight-seeing up north.

Welp, on Tuesday, Dave and I managed to do plenty seeing of sights. We hit up both Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin because they are basically right next to each other and are both right along Lake Superior. Did you know Lake Superior is the biggest fresh water lake?? I seriously felt like I was looking out into the ocean!

Fun fact: I’ve never actually seen the ocean. That might be why I found Lake Superior so freaking cool. 

I Made a Movie

I took tons of videos for snapchat (follow semihealthnut!) because I was in awe of the scenery, and Dave took a million pictures, so I decided I wanted to try to make a montage movie thing.

I was actually inspired at the social media breakfast by a gal, Jenna, who is in love with editing videos. It was so fun listening to her talk, and she mentioned I could use a starter program like Windows Live Movie Maker to edit videos…so I did! If you have a few minutes, you should definitely check it out.

 

I’m pretty sure this looks like a high school project..but I had a lot of fun making it. (until I tried to upload it and realized I don’t have enough memory on my laptop…thus started the story of me spending the entire morning clearing stuff out of my hard drive and “cleaning” it. #firstworldprobs)

I even made a video all about Zoey cat. Which I will be posting tomorrow. For Caturday.

Details of the Duluth slash Lake Superior Trip

First, we drove through Duluth over to Superior, Wisconsin.

Dave used to manage a small railroad yard in Superior (along with his large yard in the twin cities), so he pointed out a few places he frequented. It’s interesting because I would compare Duluth and Superior to Omaha and Council Bluffs back home. One is a bigger city and the other is more small town and both are separated by a state line but are so close they kind of meld into each other.

Dave drove me down a long, wooded road with all of these paths that led to a semi-secluded spot on the beach. Finally after what seemed like forever, we arrived at a spot that led to an old abandoned light house. It seemed like there used to be a full path out to it, but the path was gone and all that was left was giant rocks…which we proceeded to hike over to get to the light house a quarter of a mile away. It was fun, but it was also a little scary thinking that just one bad move might result in getting banged up pretty badly.

Many fun photos ensued. (as you can see from the movie)

Then we headed back to Duluth to eat at Grandma’s Saloon + Grill.

Grandma’s is a big deal. There’s even a Grandma’s Marathon which is actually taking place this weekend. To give you an idea, the marathon is so big that they were setting up for it on the Tuesday that we went.

The food was pretty good—home-style and hearty. We got the walleye because… when in Rome! We both also noticed that the fries were very “meh.” Then we got into a very serious discussion about the importance of tasty fries.

We headed over to the downtown Duluth lake walk after lunch.

It was pretty packed for a Tuesday, but Dave pointed out that schools were out and it being a tourist location….all the families were there.

I decided that I want to either live close to the ocean or to a ginormous lake so I can listen to the waves crash. It’s incredibly relaxing and puts me in a very peaceful, contemplative state.

After walking around a bit, we decided to take a tour of an old barge, the William A Irvin.

I will say that I wasn’t quite sure how exciting touring an old boat would be, but it was certified haunted, so…

Something that really fascinated me was that the color mint was everywhere—the color that happens to be back in style now. I know, for me to pick up on something like that is a little weird, but apparently I’m paying attention to stuff like that now.

Then it was time for dinner-ish and dessert.

Somehow 3 hours had passed since we at at Grandma’s and we were a little hungry.

Also, white chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream.

Then I spent $18 on chocolate.

It’s all still nestled safely in my chocolate drawer in the fridge (what—don’t you have a chocolate drawer?), and I can’t wait to break off a piece to savor. Maybe with some tea. And a good book.

Which would you try first? Semi-sweet fudge, Oreo-mint bark, or dark chocolate almond bark?

Serious decisions.

[Tweet “Fun places to check out in Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin! #travel “]

Okay, now I really need to get to packing!

Moving stinks. Thankfully I remembered to pack my open first box already.

Watch my video and let me know what you think! And if there’s anything different I could have done using Window’s Live Movie Maker…or if you have any tutorials I could look at, please let me know!

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Photo Editing Using Picmonkey and Photography with Nikon D5300