Perfect Duluth Day

Probably the last Superior Hiking Trail post of 2013 … but we’ll see

I’m not sure if this is called Fox Farm Pond or Paisley Pond or both, but it’s funky as hell.

Most of my Superior Hiking Trail adventures this year took place in August and September, but I hit the Sucker River to Fox Farm Road section today and, wow, some serious logging happened while I was gone.

Apparently the forest was over mature and in decline, and the timber harvest will help regenerate things.

Someday I’ll compile the full story of my 14-year adventure, hiking all 296 miles of the Superior Hiking Trail. But at this point I still have 21.2 miles to go, so that will have to wait.

One section I haven’t done is the Encampment River area. I have a good excuse; the bridge is out.

I’ve been told the water level is low enough that I could cross without the bridge, but, well, honestly I kind of don’t want to finish. I like having a little of the trail left to do.

By the way, I’m curious if there is anyone out there who has hiked the whole trail and is not a skinny elderly man from the Twin Cities. Every person I run into on the trail who claims to have done the whole thing or intends to do the whole thing is a 60-year-old man with a walking stick. But I digress.

I was hiking with my wife today and we crossed paths with Andrew Slade (of the North Shore … There and Back blog) and his wife, which is funny for two reasons: 1) The last time I posted about the Superior Hiking Trail on PDD I mentioned that it was Slade’s blog that tipped me off that the new sections were complete, and we were days apart in our hikes of some of those sections. 2) I never thought one of my hikes would be Tweeted until today.

If only we had coordinated, we could have eliminated two 30-mile car trips.