A two day trip up to the Minnesota North Shore. My main goal was to capture some shoreline long exposures, but being an area I have never been to I was up for some exploring as well.

Blue hour long exposures meant some early mornings getting to location by 4:15AM. I was hoping to get a bit more color as the sun came up, but the clouds created some added interest .

waterfalls

During the day Kazu and I would hike and look for waterfalls. The first of which was Gooseberry State Park, a pretty amazing place. They’ve managed to create a really accessible park with nice paved and well maintained trails that still manage to feel wild and open to interaction with the landscape. I highly recommend a visit.

We arrived to Tettegouche State Park by about 8AM and we were lucky to be able to explore without running into a single other person. The park was full of beautiful greenery that came alive in the morning sunlight. We hiked around the the Baptism River, but spent much of the morning on the beach where the river feeds into Lake Superior. This park has a pretty incredible visitor center with really nice facilities which are open to visitors 24hrs.

LATE MORNING LONG EXPOSURE CAPTURES

welcome to the BLACK SAND BEACH

I have been lucky enough to visit black sand beaches in Iceland and Hawaii, but I can say I was pleasantly surprised to find this beach in the Midwest! Head on up the North Shore and start looking around Silver Bay for the signs. I was pretty amazed that there were only a handful of other people visiting the beach at any given time. I can imagine it gets busy because I saw some congestion signage around, but apparently early June is the time to go! We lucked out with some 80 degree days to enjoy this beautiful spot. On the farthest end of the beach is the largest rock formation that has this pretty cool sand peninsula that allows you to walk right out to it, but the beach is quite large and you can walk down it to find more exploring opportunities at the opposite end.