Day two of Duluth Trip

Today is October 4th, 2025 and my second day of my road trip to Duluth, Minnesota.

I really excited for today, because I had a lot of fun things planned for today.

Here is the original agenda I drafted:

Base: Day trip to Lutsen, return to Duluth

Itinerary

• Early Morning: Breakfast in Duluth

• Morning: Drive to Lutsen Mountains

• Mid-Morning: Lutsen Mountains Gondola ride (lots of photos!)

• Late Morning: Lutsen Mountain trails hiking

• Afternoon: Lake Superior north shore views (Sven's Bluff/Lutsen Overlook)

• Mid-Afternoon: Oberg Mountain hiking and photography

• Late Afternoon: Silver Bay area

  • Black Beach visit
  • Split Rock Lighthouse
  • Palisade Head

• Evening: Tettegouche State Park hiking

• Dinner: Silver Bay

• Night: Return to Duluth

Key Activities

• Lutsen Mountains Gondola
• Mountain trail hiking
• Oberg Mountain hiking
• Split Rock Lighthouse
• Palisade Head
• Tettegouche State Park
• Black Beach

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While we weren't able to completely everything on that list, we still had a ton of fun sight seeing.

The first thing on the agenda, however, was traveling to Grand Maris, Minnesota.

Grand Marais is a small sleepy scenic town located on the North Shore of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota, about 110 miles northeast of Duluth. It's known for its picturesque harbor, artistic community, and outdoor recreation opportunities.

Yes, you read that right, 110 miles northeast of Duluth. The entire morning, we spent a decent hour and a half just purely driving there.

We ended up taking a little pit stop here at some tourist trap half way through to drain the weasel and buy snacks.

All the people here are local, and it's a nice, cute little mom and pop shop shops. The gas prices here were also fairly cheap and affordable. I'd reckon in the future, I'd probably retire to Northern Minnesota.

We drove few more miles until we finally reached Grand Marais. The plan was to just go sightseeing and enjoy our time there.

We parked all the way down the main thoroughfare at the town, and I look a picture of the main street:

At the end of the thoroughfare, there was a cute, little bookstore there.

It really didn't have anything that good in there, it just had the basic elementary literature, but it was still very cool to window shop and check out the spot, through.

At the end of the road, there was this amazing view of Lake Superior adjacent to the Northern Minnesota forest line that I took a picture of.

After taking in the magnificent view of the lake, I came across a donut shop that immediately caught my attention. It claimed to have the world’s best donuts—which I found hard to believe—but the place had a certain charm that made me want to check it out. The exterior looked like a warm, cozy barn, complete with a cute little mural I really liked. I didn’t manage to get good photos of it, but I did snap the one I shared.

Inside, the donut selection wasn’t huge, but they offered some unique varieties. In the end, I chose a simple glazed chocolate donut with extra sprinkles, and I picked up a few more donuts to bring to my family.

Afterward, we explored the town a bit. We wandered from shop to shop, and every place had its own distinct personality. Nothing felt the same, and it was incredibly calming to just window shop and see what the town had to offer. The whole place reminded me of those small, peaceful towns in Disney movies—lively, safe, and full of quiet charm. That’s exactly the feeling it gave me.

Kind of stereotypical, but honestly it was hella chill. Actual White people wonderland here.

I took this picture of this long road leading up the the residential part of the town, underlooking the Northern Minnesota wilderness.

Afterward, I made my way to the town’s lagoon. The area overlooked a section that I believe belonged to the U.S. Coast Guard, and it was open for visitors to walk around and explore. As we headed down, I took a picture of Lake Superior with the town in view, and I actually really liked how it turned out. Moments like that made me wish I had brought a better camera on this trip—my phone works fine, but it still ends up a bit blurry at times.

The path to the lagoon was a long, narrow stretch of dirt and concrete that eventually led us to a lighthouse overlooking both the lagoon and Lake Superior. There were plenty of people around, but it didn’t feel overwhelmingly crowded—just enough that we had to weave through them occasionally. Still, I’m happy with the photos I managed to take. The whole area was calming and peaceful, and I genuinely enjoyed being there. I’d definitely recommend visiting if you’re ever in the area.

Here’s a few more pictures of the lagoon, along with some more pictures of Lake Superior.

After that, we headed back into town to get something to eat. I found a restaurant near the entrance of town, so we drove over again and parked near a residential area up the slope of a hill. I snapped a photo of the view from there, too. Originally, we were supposed to take the gondola up the Lutsen Mountains, but it closed at 4:30 p.m., and by then it was already around 3, so we decided to skip it. It was a little disappointing, but honestly, exploring the town ended up being a lot of fun.

The restaurant we chose was called The Fisherman’s Daughter. It served fresh fish caught by local fishermen. I’m not usually a fan of fish, but I wanted to give it a try since it’s what the place is known for. The restaurant had more of a diner vibe—nothing fancy, mostly fried food. It was okay. Not the best I’ve had, definitely not something I’d put on a must-try list, but far from the worst.

If I recall correctly, I think what I had ordered was fried walleye? I can't remember xdd

Before leaving, I took one last picture of the town. Then we headed off to the next part of our day.

Since we couldn’t ride the gondola at the Lutsen Mountains, the next idea was to go hiking at Oberg Mountain. But by then, none of us really felt like doing more walking, and we wanted to see something different instead. So we decided to visit a spot called Palisade Head in the Silver Bay area. We had originally talked about hiking at a state park, but curiosity won out—we wanted to see what Palisade Head looked like. The drive took about 30 minutes to an hour to get there.

As we drove I took a couple of pictures of nature on the way there.

When we arrived at Palisade Head, our first challenge was finding a decent parking spot. The parking area was small, and there weren’t many open spaces. Thankfully, we ended up finding one that wasn’t too far from the entrance. The site has two parking areas—one at the bottom of the hill and one at the top, near the main overlook. We didn’t want to risk losing the spot we had at the bottom, so we decided to park there and walk up the hill instead.

The place was very lowkey, and it didn't have a "traditional" entrance, compared to the other nature spots. I also didn't anticipate that there'd be so many people here as well.

There were no guards, or official MN state associates there, and so everything was do-it-yourself.

Anyways, going up the hill to get to the actual spot was kind of ridiculous.

What I didn’t expect was just how steep that climb would be. I took plenty of pictures on the way up, and even though the walk was a bit annoying, I guess it counted as our exercise for the day—well, my exercise, really.

When I eventually got to the top, the weather was getting pretty cloudy, but nothing too extreme, and the view from atop was pretty magnificent.

Slowly getting closer, the parking lot at the top of the hill was crowded to the brim and there were no more spaces left. Meaning that we got really lucky that we parked at the bottom.

As I walked ahead, I saw this insanely view of pure, raw, and untouched Minnesota nature beauty. So I took a pic:

Then we finally arrived at Palisade's head and the view was super fucking cool!

Palisade Head is a dramatic 300-foot cliff rising straight up from Lake Superior, located about 15 miles northeast of Silver Bay on Minnesota's North Shore. It's one of the most spectacular and iconic geological formations along the lake.

It's composed of billion-year-old rhyolite (volcanic rock) and is part of the ancient lava flows that shaped the North Shore landscape.

There are no MN State Sponsored authorities here, so people had to maintain extreme caution when exploring the area, one wrong step and you fall down.

The main views were absolutely amazing. I am very blessed to be able to even witness this.

Do you remember that one film from 1993, The Good Son? Featuring Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone, and Elijah Wood from the Lord of the Rings? Yeah, me neither.

But actually! The ending of this movie (spoiler alert) was shot here at this location. This is the spot where Macaulay Culkin's character, Henry, died after falling off of the cliffs.

After viewing the main part, I started to go along the cliff line, and walked through the narrow passages. The area was very dangerous and very scary to navigate through because as I mentioned before: one wrong step and you would fall off of the cliff.

Luckily, the top of the cliff wasn't too steep, so it wasn't that difficult to walk across. I walked, and walked, until I reached a section of the cliff that had this magnificent view of the sunset overlooking both the untamed Northern Minnesota wilderness, and Lake Superior.

I also took another picture of the vast expanse of Lake Superior. And sometimes I forget, that this is a lake, and not an ocean.

The view was immaculate.

I took some more photos of the area before leaving:

The transition downwards wasn't so bad. I took some pictures documenting my way down, and the crepuscule of the sunset highlighted everything.

The experience was pretty fun. I always wanted to explore Palisade Head, and it was pretty cool to check it out. I'm really glad that I was able to snag these pictures as well.

After that, we left, but we were going to check out another spot along the way for dinner: New Scenic Cafe.

This restaurant is a fancy restaurant located on the outskirts of Duluth in a sleepy seaside town called "Two Harbors."

The drive there wasn't too shabby, took like maybe, an hour or so to arrive there. The main issue with this spot though was that the main highway we were on, had a traffic jam, so we had to take the backroads. But that was alright.

I took a picture of the trip:

I saw this beautiful view of the moonlight illuminating over Lake Superior and took a pic:

The only thing I dislike about it though is that my camera couldn't really capture the photo that good. Which is another reason why I'm planning on investing into a much better camera.

Anyway, when we got there it was pretty dark out, but still it was also pretty crowded.

Let me describe New Scenic Cafe:\

New Scenic Cafe is a highly regarded restaurant located on scenic Highway 61 between Duluth and Two Harbors, Minnesota, overlooking Lake Superior. It's considered one of the best dining destinations on Minnesota's North Shore

It's an actual fancy restaurant, and to be real, I've never traveled to a fancy restaurant before, so I was curious on what this place had to offer.

Like I mentioned before, the place was surprisingly crowded, and even though we got there sometime around 8:45 pm, we still had to wait 30 minutes for seating.

When we finally got a seat, I looked at the menu, and was a bit disappointed by the lack of items. The menu selection was pretty limited, but thankfully still seemed and sounded kind of delicious.

But like, I think that's like- the fucking problem with "fancier" restaurants: they lack the selection of options to choose from, and solely limit people to whatever the chef has for the night. And while, sure, that's not a "bad" thing given the fact that it's a "fancier" restaurant - it definitely isn't giving it any points against the shittier restaurants that, while food is mediocre, has much more options to choose from.

Me, as a consumer, I like to have options. I won't settle for just Coca-Cola, I want both Pepsi, AND Coco-Cola, AND RC Cola.

I wouldn't just want McDonalds, I want McDonalds, and Burger King, AND Wendy's - get what I am saying? Now you can claim that "beggars can't be choosers" but at the same time, "chooser's don't have to be beggars" and that's why the world is better with variety.

Everything on the menu sounded pretty fancy, and I had a hard time contemplating on what to get, because everything did kind of sound pretty good. I didn't really want to miss out on anything, but at the same time, I didn't want to miss out on trying something exotic and new.

I ended up getting this Japanese styled Salmon dish, and honestly, it was pretty damn good.

It was like an experience, and the food was surprisingly very good. The seaweed was very tasty and had a good texture, and the salmon was spiced up pretty well.

I guess the only bad thing about it was the portion size, but then again, this is one of those fancier, up-the-ass restaurants, so Im not in any position to complain.

I ended up paying the entire bill for the table, and it came down to a grand total of $140 :sob:

But honestly, I thought it would be priced more.

But yeah, as a man, it's my responsibility to pay off the bill, and I did so with pride.

Well, that was it for today. After that we went back to the hotel and prepared for the next day.

Thanks for reading my blog on day 2.

Love,

Devv