Second, I recommend hiking along Chester Creek.
There are plenty of other local outdoor attractions, too, from parks with fancy stone towers in them... to hidden beaches where people build unconventional homes.
Gooseberry Falls can be wonderful, but be careful if it's rainy (information from our last visit, when John broke his leg on a wet wooden bar) and expect huge crowds at major vacation times like 4th of July weekend (information from this visit).
And I don't have pictures of much else, since my camera has been working unreliably, but here are a few other tidbits:
The beach at Lutsen Resort is still my favorite place to find agates. Someone said Beaver Bay had the best agate-picking beach, but it turned out to be pretty inaccessible. We went on a safari through about a mile of brush on a tiny trail, halfway through which there was a threatening "No Trespassing" sign. Once we got to the beach, we saw people there, and didn't know if they were visitors like us or owners who might kick us out, so we turned back. So much for Beaver Bay.
Cascade Falls is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. It's only 300 feet from the road, in a majestically silent grove that feels like a cathedral, and the only sound is the incredible, powerful rush of the waterfall. Oh, and there's a big swollen tree in there that looks as if it has a giant tumor. Plenty to take pictures of.
Wisconsin Point is only about a half hour from Duluth, but it feels like someplace on the ocean. Sandy beach, tall dry grasses, big silent sky. You feel a thousand miles away from the world... or you would if there weren't a hundred people sitting out there waiting for the fireworks. Dang 4th of July.
Jay Cooke State Park is pretty nice. We went on a long hike in the woods, on a grassy trail that looped around and went back to the main trail, but got more and more overgrown as it got farther from the start point, as if most of the people who had tried to walk on it gave up before completing the loop. It wasn't that long, though, only about two or three miles, all of it pretty much the same in terms of scenery. It was said that we might see ladyslippers, but maybe it wasn't the season for them.
The gulls in Canal Park have always been, and always will be, one of my favorite attractions. Throw a few bits of popcorn at your feet and you will be surrounded by a crowd of them, eating, yelling, chasing each other away from the food. I love how the boisterous ones will stick their heads down almost between their feet for the first few yells, and then raise their beaks gradually up into the sky as they get louder.
I'm not sure what they're communicating. There were moments when I felt like moving into Canal Park and living among them like Dian Fossey among the gorillas, trying to figure them out. There's a fascinating book called "Ravens in Winter," written by a scientist who had been baffled by the social behavior of ravens, and had observed them for years trying to solve their mysteries. Their custom of calling each other when they found food was puzzling to him, since they didn't seem to have a reason to want to share. But as he watched them, he gradually found out lots of really interesting things about their social structure, and about the personality types of individual ravens, that made it all make sense.
I wish someone would do a study like that with gulls. They had feeding behaviors I couldn't figure out, either, which seemed to have something to do with their personality types. The more aggressive ones would sometimes chase the more timid ones away from food, but then ignore the food itself, like a dog in a manger. I'd have to become a gull-watcher for years to figure out why they do something like that.
Oh, and one more thing: John can skip rocks.
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