Welcome to this month’s blog circle! This month’s circle timed perfectly with our last trip of the summer, which means I planned the post before the trip and now have TONS of photos to share here. If you’re local, you will so appreciate this.

Since discovering Duluth five years ago, our family seems to crave going Up North once a summer. If you can time it right – go on a weekday so it won’t be so crowded or expensive to stay over, make sure you have perfect weather – it’s just bliss. I’m no Duluth expert, but I’d say we have our favorites and bests and our musts, and these things satisfy us until next summer.

First we stop at Spirit Mountain and ride the alpine coaster. But I never take my big girl camera on that. Self explanatory.

Then lunch. Duluth Grill every time. Again, timing. Time it after the lunch rush and the wait is short. The food and the coffee are divine. The pork bowl I had made me look forward to leftovers for breakfast the next morning. I digress.

Arriving in Duluth, you have to start checking the shipping schedule so your son can see at least one ship come into the harbor.

While we wait for lunch…

The harbor. Canal Park. Seagulls eating out of hands or in mid-air.

Beacon Pointe was a little slow with our check-in. Luckily they let us check out late the next day, but it definitely delayed our relaxation.





What we love is to check out bikes and ride them on the lakewalk and pull off alongside hints of a path, climb down to the rocky shore and start hunting for treasures.

It is so relaxing, this rock hunting and throwing. The water is icy. The water feels amazing in summer.

Alla’s mission – lake glass.

This isn’t an ad for the Beacon Pointe, but really that place is swell. Every room has a lake view with a chair placed perfectly for reading.
The view. Waking up to this.
The kids have a toy store they like to visit. We all love the bikes and the food at Duluth Grill and the alpine coaster and Fisher adores the ships. But I just come for the rocks. For the smoothest ones I can find. So in our last hours, I want as much time as I can have with my feet in the water, sifting for treasures to bring home. I gather as many as the kids.

Side note, I sometimes ask for a Duluth trip for Mother’s Day, kind of to ensure we get to go, so this year in August we celebrated Mother’s Day again. I was just happy to celebrate a wonderful summer, to get away one last time, to have one last trip just to be our family in this season, before the school year begins and everything shifts. Duluth is good for this.

Please follow the blog circle around to Reading, PA documentary photographer Liz DeGroff!