The Superior Hiking Trail spans the North Shore from Two Harbors all the way to the Canadian border, offering over 200 miles of maintained hiking trails, with short loops of varied lengths, terrain, and panoramic vistas of mountains and shoreline. Our moose population is legendary. The area surrounding Grand Marais is one of the most populated remaining wolf habitats in the contiguous states, and is home to pine marten, white-tail deer, fox, beaver, and black bear. A choir of songbirds and bald eagles, osprey, great gray owls, waterfowl and game birds dwell nearby in the woods and waters of nature's wilderness stage. The incredible array of feathered friends in the area make birding worthy of it's own annual festival, which will take place in September at the time of the annual migration.
Autumn here sets two stages.
The opening performance is about a week into September, with brilliant reds and oranges taking center stage as the maples ascend to peak color along the ridgeline, mountainsides, and valleys of the Sawtooth Mountains. And if you want to see the view from above, nothing compares to a fly-over of the area in maple season. The encore opens as autumn comes to the lakeshore, when the canopy of birch, aspen, and tamarack explode into a wild scene of yellow and gold. Get the perspective from the water, in a canoe or kayak, or take a sail on the Hjordis, the schooner that resides at the North House Folk School. As the colors subside, Lake Superior gets stirred up by the gales of November.