This is a scene that thousands of people miss every year when they visit the Twin Ports. In fact, even many frequent visitors to Duluth-Superior don't recognize this lesser-known place. This is the Superior Entry to the Twin Ports Harbor. Unlike its man-made sister, the Duluth Canal Entry, it lacks an iconic lift bridge but is the natural, original entry to the bustling harbor (although modifications have been made to support modern shipping traffic). Hotels do not line the waterfront here, and vessels often glide through this opening between Minnesota and Wisconsin Points unnoticed.

That's exactly what would have happened if I had not been there on  a balmy mid-November evening. With its cargo aboard, the Roger Blough made its way through the Superior entry and out into the big lake.I likely was the Blough's sole spectator as it departed that evening.

After the Blough exited, I remained as the sun sank below the horizon behind me, casting warm light onto the Superior Entry/Wisconsin Point Lighthouse at the end of the breakwater. The calm water within the breakwater made for nice reflections of both the Blough and lighthouse.

If you're looking for a close-up and exclusive view of boat traffic in the Twin Ports, remember to check out the "back door."

Park Point, more formally known as Minnesota Point, is a seven-mile long sandbar in Duluth that extends from Canal Park to the Superior, Wisconsin harbor entry. It is interrupted by the man-made Duluth canal, and hence, is technically an island and no longer a sandbar. Technicalities aside, Minnesota Point, combined with the three-mile Wisconsin Point is believed to be the largest freshwater sandbar in the world.

I was walking along the beach on a recent visit to Park Point and noticed some interesting cloud formations in the sky over Lake Superior. Soon, I found the sand formation in the image above that almost-perfectly complements the cloud pattern in the sky. The golden hues of the beachgrass also offer a nice contrast with the light blue sky and lake.

Because of the simplicity of these images, they are great as desktop wallpaper backgrounds, and I have added the specially-sized images here.

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter." - Ansel Adams

With the opening of the popular Bentleyville USA Tour of Lights yesterday, Duluth has put on its Christmas hat yet again. With nearly three million lights illuminating dozens of displays, Bentleyville proclaims itself as the largest holiday light display in the Midwest. The panoramic image above of downtown Duluth, the waterfront, and the Bentleyville display is a previously unreleased image from 2009. A notable addition to the 2010 display is a 120-foot tall steel-fabricated Christmas tree adorned with 50,000 LED lights that jive in sync to the tunes of "Jingle Bell Rock" and other Christmas favorites.

Bentleyville 2010 Tour of Lights is open daily November 20 through December 26, weather permitting. More information can be found here: http://www.bentleyvilleusa.org.

On November 10 each year, the staff and visitors at Split Rock Lighthouse observe the tragic loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its 29 crew members aboard with a special beacon lighting ceremony. The 35 years that have passed since that fateful 1975 storm may seem like a long time, but the relative recency of its sinking has immortalized its place as one of the best known Great Lakes shipwrecks.

The ceremony also commemorates the loss of all vessels on the Great Lakes, a handful of which brought Split Rock Lighthouse into its very existence. Even as modern technology has obsoleted the lighthouse, it remains a symbol of the great efforts to ensure the safety of maritime travel.

This is the sixth consecutive year that I have photographed the beacon on November 10. The weather was mild compared with most years, but the wind was blowing hard and sent waves splashing over the rocky shore, some of those reaching my feet. That said, the agitated waters on this evening did not remotely resemble the stormy seas of November 10, 1975. We can only imagine . . .