The Gun Flint Trail, North shore of Lake Superior, MN

Grainbelt

I was always under the impression that it was a trail, but at this point it is pretty much a highway.

A group of local riders have been going up there the second weekend in October for a number of years to have pancakes at the Trail Center Lodge. I tagged along in the car this year so I could explore some areas my relatively sporty motorcycle wouldn't want to go, and to drag along some camera equipment.

The Gunflint Trail extends from Grand Marais, MN on the North shore of Lake Superior up to the US/Canada border. We were probably a week, perhaps two, past the peak autumn colors, but it was fairly pleasant nonetheless.


The lighthouse, the town itself, and docks at the municipal campground where I pitched my tent.







After a lovely dinner of fresh lake trout I set out to capture the sunset, and any oddities that may exist in the harbor. I wasn't disappointed.




















After that brief excursion I met up with the crew at the Gun Flint Tavern to tell lies and tolerate some really horrible folk music. After a brief campfire in the middle of the night, I called it a day. The next morning, I awoke to this:








Building on the right, on the water, is the Angry Trout where I had dinner the night before. Great food, a little heavy on the hippie / sustainable / local food agenda, but worth it. Grand Marais has always been a destination for people from the Twin Cities. If you've seen a bright yellow 'Sven and Ole's' sticker on a car around here, it is from a pizza shop in town. Anyway.





From there we headed up the Gun Flint Trail to breakfast. I was glad to be in the car, as the trail itself is heavily patrolled and has a 50mph speed limit, which I would have been forced to obliterate on the bike.

Some detritus has accumulated in the parking lot:





From there I headed out to explore some dodgy forest service roads, tickling the undercarriage of my little car in the process. No harm, no foul, I guess.







I was really disgruntled that I couldn't see over the brush at the side of the road, and eventually stood on seats with my head thru the sunroof. Success!



Not near as much water as usual up here.



Stopped in Silver Bay on the way home. The scale of the industrial mining up here never ceases to amaze me.



Sun was shining down upon the harbor.



I headed down MN 23 from Duluth, hoping to catch a little park where an old mining camp was on the St. Louis river.

Barely made it. Colors are just past peak down here to the south.














Thanks for coming along with me! It was a great 36 hour departure from my urban existence, and a useful reminder of the variety of geography that exists within the state of Minnesota.

David_S85

Love the entire set, and that Tokheim gas pump almost grown over is really cool. I should mention that the all the shots seem too dark to me, and all by about the same amount.

Grainbelt

David_S85 wrote: »

Love the entire set, and that Tokheim gas pump almost grown over is really cool. I should mention that the all the shots seem too dark to me, and all by about the same amount.

Thanks, David.

As for them all being too dark, I'd expect a fair number of them to be - I was bumping up against the limits of my camera and chose to preserve the highlights in the sky, as that's where the drama was. I bracketed a few of the exposures and I was left with pure white skies in a number of the shots when I metered off of the terrain.


For my reference though, as I'm working off a calibrated monitor, do you find this overly dark?

David_S85

Grainbelt wrote: »

Thanks, David.

As for them all being too dark, I'd expect a fair number of them to be - I was bumping up against the limits of my camera and chose to preserve the highlights in the sky, as that's where the drama was. I bracketed a few of the exposures and I was left with pure white skies in a number of the shots when I metered off of the terrain.

For my reference though, as I'm working off a calibrated monitor, do you find this overly dark?

Yes. My monitor is also calibrated, and might even be slightly too bright at that, and it still looks a bit murky to me. The weather and light look like they were a challenge - something autumn light can do. If these were my shots, I would pump up the curve and add slight contrast and also a tiny bit of saturation to make them pop more.

Grainbelt

Thanks David. I processed these from RAW and do have the ability to bump the exposures and tone curves even more than I already did. Will introduce some noise in shadow areas but I'll make a few attempts and see what it looks like. Appreciate the feedback.

FLYING EYEBALL

good stuff gb

and

I agree with david on things being a little underexposed...but I'm not on a calibrated monitor so take that fwiw

Hope you don't mind me playing with one..

KerrBear

I love Grand Marais. My husband and I were married up the road a ways into the forest but had our reception at The Pie Place before it became part of the hotel. Thanks for sharing these beautiful pictures.

sailronin

Lovely series that shows a part of America totally foreign to me. Well done.

Lornce

Dude, I'm seeing lots of red x's in between a few nice photographs.

Not sure why?

Grainbelt

At some point after this thread was started, during the discussion of whether the images were perhaps too dark, I reworked some of the images from RAW and replaced them in smugmug, forgetting that the links here would be broken. I'll try to figure out what is what here and fix the image links.

Meantime, they are all in the gallery on smugmug if you want to browse though them.



edit: I think I fixed everything above. There are actually a few more pics up than there were originally, as my internal 'does this suck?' meter was feeling generous this morning.