Lake Superior is the largest, deepest, and cleanest of the five Great Lakes. You can see up to fifty feet to the bottom, although there aren't very many places where she is only 50 feet deep, and her deepest depth is 1333 feet. The lake covers 31,820 square miles, and is 383 miles east to west and 160 miles north to south. The average water temperature is 40F and 4.4C. She also is one of the most dangerous of the Great Lakes, laying claim to many shipwrecks and close calls over the years. One of the most famous wrecks was the Edmund Fitzgerald, which went down in a November Gale in 1975, losing all 29 crew members aboard. A few years ago, you may remember a Gordon Lightfoot song called "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" about the wreck.

Her rocky, tree-lined shores follow about 1300 miles of rugged coastline, and her waters host a large variety of salties and lakers, the large ships that ply these waters carrying iron ore, salt, coal, grain and other commodities all over the world. The twin ports of Duluth-Superior are the farthest inland seaports in the world, located at the westernmost end of the Great Lakes-St.Lawrence Seaway System, and the salties have come an astonishing 2,342 miles upriver and the other Great Lakes to get here. You can see the Duluth-Superior shipping schedule here. The largest of the ships are 1000 feet long and are known as "lakers" because they are lake-locked, which means they're too big to fit through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie or Niagara so they spend their entire careers on the Lakes. These super tankers can carry up to 60,000 tons per trip. The ports serve about 200 foreign-flag "salties"per year. You can sometimes tell a salty from a laker, not by it's size as you might think, but by the rust that forms on the salties from the salt water of the ocean.

Follow us on a journey along the north shore drive from Duluth to Two Harbors, by the shores of Gitchee Gumee, the name the Indians gave this lake and Longfellow made famous in his poem The Song of Hiawatha. We start off in Duluth and drive north on HWY 61, past the historic Glensheen Mansion,and make our first stop at Kitchee Gammi Park. You can see the rocky shores. The gulls scream and circle the rocks. Here is a great place for sitting and watching the ships as they make their way toward the harbor. It is also a lovely place to watch the waves roll in or crash the shore, depending on the mood the Grand Dame is in on that particular day. Other good places to view the lake are Stoney Point, across the road from Tom's Logging Camp, and French River. The day this picture was taken, the lake was fairly calm. The week before when we were there, there were waves crashing the shore far taller than I am.One of the amazing things about this lake is due to it's great size, it can create it's own weather patterns. It has been known to have 30' waves out to sea with gentle swells at the shore, never giving a clue to the raging waters miles away. These photos were taken a week before the above one at the same spot along the shore at Kitchee Gammi Park. The week of September 19, there was a noreaster on Saturday, keeping us off the GrampaWoo III cruise we had looked forward too and also limiting our harbour cruise on one of the boats of the VistaFleet to the harbor area, instead of going out into the lake under the famous aerial lift bridge. I wish I'd had a video camera the day we took the Vista Cruise, as we were sitting on the bow, three of the four of us in chairs that were welded together but unfortunately not welded to anything else. With every roll of the boat, the three of us (and our chairs!) slipped from side to side! It was different to say the least! And a lot of fun. And I almost forgot. It was COLD!

Enjoy the photos. There are some of Split Rock, Gooseberry Falls, and Duluth. I'll add more when I get a chance. You can watch a slideshow of all the photos or look at them one at a time. In any case, please take a look and see why a Minnesotan will always say we live in "God's Country"!

©1998-2000 Sara Froehlich and Northlite Web Design

This page was last updated on October 24, 2000