Duluth’s signature Aerial Lift Bridge (Bridge L6116) as seen through the morning fog of a downtown coffee shop. (Photo by Ben Fulton)
Travel by car across the Midwest is a slow-motion kaleidoscope of scenery that, paradoxically, moves fast. After a while, the curious blend of these sensations can induce a hypnotic effect. The rude odors of highway rest stops and gas stations, replete with food and snack offerings better off banned by the Geneva Conventions, punctuate the journey enough to keep a traveler awake.
But even the strange rhythm of go-and-stop, stop-then-go liberates the mind. Birds flex their wings before a long flight. Drivers remind themselves how to operate their car’s cruise control.
In Arizona, where my stepfather lives, seniors regale one another with tales of wonderful journeys north—usually to Colorado—in attempts to escape the heat. Here in humble St. Louis, my girlfriend and I aspire to make Duluth, Minnesota, our sometime retreat from our city’s face-melting blasts of molten summer months. Based on our first trip north, I am already angling for more of Minnesota’s charming, northernmost city.
After its decades-long renown as the birthplace of Bob Dylan, Duluth began to make the media rounds circa 2011 as a so-called “climate-proof” refuge from the coming onslaught of climate change. This certainly piques the interest, but it is worth noting that the media issued the same prognosis for the state of Vermont before its bad run of luck with several major flood events inside of just one year.
So while a large portion of Duluth’s attraction is the chill of lower temperatures, it has plenty else to offer. For travelers used to making a beeline to A-list cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, or New York the first attraction of Duluth is the low-key feel of a similar locale with a Midwest (albeit northern) vibe. It is much like changing from one pair of old jeans to another, except colder. The people are amiable and unrushed, the close proximity of disparate neighborhoods is familiar, and the food is affordable and unpretentious. And yet Duluth is its own domain. Within a two-block range of its downtown you can see both hospital staff on a coffee break and locals with tattooed faces, boutiques in renovated retail spaces next to boarded-up shops, and University of Minnesota Duluth hipsters next to blue-collar workers in flannel and overalls. You can sense that everyone has just survived a brutal winter, with more cold just around the corner, and that toughness shapes the aesthetic. Duluth’s streets, chewed into potholes by salt and snowplows, tell the same story.
“Duluth sits on a 700-foot hill, and many streets are almost vertical, so trade your stick-shift for an automatic—a clunker—so it won’t bother you when the salt eats out the floorboards. Even with a good set of snow tires, driving downhill is a sort of controlled slide. So don’t get upset when you are rear-ended. Accept it as a rite of passage,” said Garrison Keillor in “Ten Things to Know Before You Move to Duluth” as part of a 2012 broadcast.
The city’s edge at the western coast of Lake Superior is another selling point, at least during summer months when the water is freed from its state of ice long enough to produce the dulcet tone of crashing waves. The shoreline pavement is ideal for running, walking, or just plain standing in awe at the sight of the world’s fourth-largest freshwater lake. With the mist of this great lake kissing your face there is little else to ask for, except perhaps the hand of your beloved, an ice cream, or cup of morning coffee.
When contemplating travel, we cannot help but think big: London, Paris, or—why not?—even flights to Australia and New Zealand lasting more than a whole day’s time. It is those magical interstices just within reach we tend to forget, the local gems just across the way that, once taken in, might blow our minds in ways so subtle we do not at first recognize them.
Duluth is no easy day-trip from St. Louis or southern Illinois. A bit of driving stamina is required, and maybe one night at a roadside hotel somewhere at mid-point in Wisconsin. Sometimes we want an easy choice because that is also what we need: a reminder of the manifold variety of what we think will be familiar, but not altogether so.
