Features
Whether you’re a die-hard ATV fan who ventures far and wide in search of trails or if you just like to rent ATVs once in a while for a day ride with the family, these five trails offer wild rides through the varied landscape of the northern wilds. Visit them often to experience how the shifting seasons manifest as changes in the trees, flowers, wildlife, and weather conditions.
When I moved to Duluth nine years ago and heard there was a trail running series, I figured I’d give it a try. Here’s one of my early logbook entries: “Epic mud and snow and rain and water. Couldn’t feel feet initially. Up to mid-right thigh in water on way to finish.” I hosed off most of the mud while fully-clothed in the yard before I showered inside. I thought: Now, THAT’s racing.
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My wife Mary and I have been wild ricing since 2006. While searching for a processor for our 2009 harvest, one processor piqued my interest because of her traditional parching method. Most commercial rice processors parch rice in big tumblers heated by gas or LPG. Cathy Chaver hand-parches the rice over an open fire.
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There is something grand about living in Thunder Bay—the largest city beside the world’s largest freshwater lake. Here’s an insider’s snapshot of some activities you can find in the city and area.
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Sometimes it seems there are as many ways to catch fish as there are anglers. But experienced anglers usually have a few tricks up their sleeve for consistently catching fish. Very often, those tricks include the use of a favorite lure. We talked to three experienced fishing guides who shared their favorite fishing lures for consistently catching fish in the Northern Wilds.
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Over 40 golf courses pepper the Northland, and while these courses vary in size, difficulty, price tag and cachet, they share a set of features that makes golfing in the northern wilds unlike golfing anywhere else in the world.
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Want to get out on Lake Superior and sail the big water? There are plenty of opportunities along the North Shore do to just that this summer.
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A few years back, paddler Brandee Wenzel took a day trip in June down a choppy Boundary Waters lake.
Wenzel stayed close to shore to avoid the wind gusts blowing down the lake and fanning out on the lake’s surface but, as she paddled across a bay, a gust of wind came down the water towards her. The wind blew a spinning waterspout about an arm span in width and raised about 4 to 5 inches from the water surface into Wenzel’s canoe, knocking her into the water without her lifejacket.
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In a world of video games, when my 8-year-old boy says he wants to go mountain biking, I drop everything and go. The great thing about the Piedmont Trail system in Duluth is that you get a full-blown biking adventure—and it’s in the middle of the city.
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When Matt Pensyl moved to Duluth from San Diego in 2008, he sold his surfboards. As he wrote in an email interview, “I thought my surfing days were behind me.”
Then his wife, “Bless her heart,” discovered that Minnesota harbored a budding chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting water quality, beach access, and threatened surf breaks. Pensyl got involved. (Fellow Surfrider member Graeme Thickins described him as “kind of a master at organizing events.”) Now he is helping the chapter stage a local celebration of International Surfing Day.
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