For old folks like us you probably remember the “potential craze” back near the turn of the century called simply “IT”. The ad gimmicks would basically just say “It is coming” and they never told you what it was. IT turns out to be called a Segway and is a total blast to ride. It took us about 10 minutes to learn how to balance on it and ride it without killing ourselves. About 5 of those minutes used to coerce us to actually get on IT.
One stop on the tour was the Rose Garden at the far reaches of Canal Park in the City of Duluth. When Interstate 35 was constructed through downtown in 1992 the fine folks on the planning board managed to get three separate tunnels created. On each tunnel they put 6 feet of dirt and created city parks One of them was the Rose Garden
Just picture an interstate highway running right underneath this beautiful place.
Canal Park was designated as an area for tourism to help Duluth recover from the loss of the city’s industrial base in the 1980s. We explored the 4.2 mile lakewalk/boardwald a number of times walking and bike riding as well as a bit on the Segway. This is one of the nicest city revitalization projects we have seen.
We stole this image from the Duluth tourism site but figure they will not mind.For much of the 4.2 miles there is a parallel boardwalk and paved walking/riding path. Storms have recently played havoc with the boardwalk section.
For all who have never heard about it, the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT) winds its way for 310 miles from Duluth, Minnesota all the way up the North Shore of Lake Superior to Canada. Twelve years ago while bicycling around the lake we noticed signage that made us aware of the trail’s existence. To kick off our retirement we decided to hike the entire SHT. This will allow us to experience a hiking trail that is different than the Finger Lakes Trail in NY (FLT) or the Appalachian Trail (AT) on the east coast. It will also allow me to shed some of those unwanted pounds that seem to creep onto my body during the academic year while teaching.
You can see that the SHT parallels the shores of Lake Superior rather closely. This affords the hiker awesome lake views from time to time.This is the book we use to get to and from one trail head to another. We purchased it at www.shta.org.
The folks that designed the SHT figured that it should start at the Minnesota-Wisconsin border and head north from there. To do this we had to hike “out and back” to the terminus 1.9 miles each way. This means you only get 1.9 miles of hiking credit but 3.8 miles of caloric burn credit. When we got to the border there was a bit of signage signifying the spot but the big deal was the sign that said “NO TRAIL BEYOND THIS POINT”. We supposed that at some point they would connect the SHT to a trail in Wisconsin? We also signed into the trail register there and have not found another single register box on the trail to date.
A trail that dead-ends in the woods?If you cannot read the chicken scratch in the trail register…..”Roy and Laurie Dando beginning our end to end hike of the SHT. 10 miles a day gets us to Canada in a month or so. Lots of bugs but what a beautiful trail.”A selfie of us at the official southern terminus of the SHT. Who needs a selfie stick?
We have planned on leaving our bullet at many trail-heads and possibly using those locations as a place to camp at night. Usually we can get a feel for whether the area is safe and welcoming. The last thing we want to do is get someone aggravated at us for parking our camper where it is not welcome.
Wild Valley Trail Head was home for a few days.
Spending an evening at a trail head can be a bit eerie when you hear those “bump in the nights”. Wonder if it could have been a bear leaving his/her calling card right outside our bullet camper?
For any animal scat aficianados: We figure this to be black bear scat. Either that or one heck of a big dog as I wear a size 11 shoe!
We have been in the Grand Marais area before when we took our tandem bike around Lake Superior in 2006. It was back then that we realized how beautiful the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is. For that reason we chose to motor up through lower Michigan to cross the Mackinaw Bridge and spend some time in the UP versus driving through Indiana and Illinois to reach Duluth, MN. What a great choice it was.
The Mackinaw Bridge closes one day a year so folks can hike across it. It is part of the official route of the North Country National Scenic Trail that winds from North Dakota to Vermont.
Some local residents claimed we must hike the Chapel Loop hike near Munising, Michigan. We concur that so far, this is the nicest 10 mile hike we have ever been on. After a nice 3 mile hike into the lakeshore with a few nice waterfalls we were treated to 4 miles of the North Country National Scenic Trail and its views of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. That is an aweful lot of National stuff for one day but boy are we glad the government decided to keep this piece of property in the public domain.
Notice the poor tree clinging to the mainland by the “roots of its chinny chin chin”. How that occurred we will never know (unless someone out there knows these things and will tell us).
One of the many waterfalls we saw during the Chapel Loop hike.
The trail tread was very easy to walk but we didn’t have any interest in slipping a bit to the left as the lake was 100-200 feet below. As much as we like swimming, the fall might not allow a swim in the very cold waters of Gitche Gumme.
One step to the left and oops…..The noise the sea gulls made from inside the caves was amazing
This little guy (maybe gal?) was not afraid of human activity. I am sure many have fed him before but I get a bit guarded about the amount of food we have to eat when out for a long hike.
Any thoughts on naming the chipmunk?
We read a bit about the Michigan H58. It has an interesting, and somewhat recent history. Google it for more interesting info on it. It sounded interesting enough for us to take a bike ride from Munising to Grand Marais one day. We are either becoming wussier or wiser as we drove the bike to just outside Munising and bicycled back to Grand Marais before taking our scooter back the 40 miles to pick up the truck. In the “olden days” we would have cycled both ways. We stopped at a little pull out to eat our lunch and found this sign right on the lakeshore that read “No ATV activity beyond this point”. We thought the lake was a good enough indication regarding that.
The road to nowhere.
We would have loved to stay in the UP of Michigan but there is more to see in our great country. Off to Minnesota and the Superior Hiking Trail.
It is Brad’s birthday. He stopped up to bid us a fond adieux before we left at around 1:30 for our long journey. As it was 95 degrees as we were having the truck pull our loaded rig up all the hills of New England we were very happy to have leased the Chevy truck for the trip. Boy are we going to beat the crap out of it over the next few years.
Our rig at one of our first stops as we forgot to take its picture at home.
We got to the campground at a bit after 9pm so the sun was about gone but the area seemed deserted. We realized that this was our 20 year anniversary of sorts as it was 1998 when we met and the first place I took Laurie was to the Bretton Woods area in NH.
The Iron Ranger is where we deposit “$18 in the hole” for an evening stay.Our spot at Zealand Falls Campground. A no frills tradition. Priceless.
What a great sleep in the crisp and cool NH air. The temperature dropped from 95 into the mid 50s by morning time. We almost had to put the heat on! After breakfast we unloaded the scooter for a ride up to the WMNF (White Mountain National Forest) parking area and a nice hike up to the Gem Pool for our yearly picture. On the way up we came across a moose.
Any thoughts on what we should name her?
That little pine tree is now around 12 feet tall and some of its lower branches have been mutilated by folks resting on the rock next to it over the years but our photo looks very similar to the one we took there almost exactly 20 years ago.
2003
At the Gem Pool halfway up Mt. Washington
Today (2018)…..Have we aged?
Same spot at the Gem Pool
We noted that we had not done any hiking with elevation this year and that the boulders/tree roots etc were doing their job in keeping our core muscles in shape and our balance in check. We were going to scooter up Clinton Rd. to the Mt. Willard hiking trail but the road was closed. That is not the first time a seasonal road up here was closed in the middle of the summer. Poor folks with a GPS.
Saw this little critter on the side of the base road to the Cog Railway
We drove down to Upper Falls and watched the locals cliff dive etc. It was by far, the busiest I have ever seen the falls. No diving for us today though. A very weird site was a totally tattooed guy with a big swastika on his chest. He was swimming etc next to all sorts of folks. Wonder what they all thought of his careless advertising?
We are not giving the advertiser any credit but he was there.Upper Falls is our favorite place to cliff dive over the years
Next stop … Mt. Willard. We were going to scooter up Clinton Road to the Mt. Willard hiking trail but the road was closed. That is not the first time a seasonal road up here was closed in the middle of the summer. Poor folks with a GPS. There was almost no one at the summit and the views were incredible as usual. The bugs put a small damper on the mood but we are up north toward the end of black fly season so that is how it goes.
View from Mt. Willard. US Route 302 winding through Crawford Notch
After dinner we drove down to Lower falls for a game of cards and a bottle of champagne. Unfortunately the champagne bottle slipped and smashed on the rocks. We will call the rocks our “ship” that we are christening for lack of anything else to say about that. Another wonderful evening was had by all.
Lower Ammonoosuc Falls. We like to play gin rummy and drink a wee bit of gin here after a day of activity.
Thursday saw us getting on the bike for the first time in a while. We decided to cycle to lunch in Bethlehem, NH (not the middle east). We doubt the name of the town has anything to do with it but summertime seems to be the time when the Orthodox Jewish community likes to vacation here. We picked a good route for the first ride as there was only one real hill each way. We decided to try the Maplewood golf course/country club for our lunch. We have been driving through Bethlehem yearly and always wondered what the very expensive looking establishments were like.
Our tandem bike. Its trailer (BOB) is with us but has not been needed yet.
We did get to Lower Falls for some card playing and relaxing. Hard to believe that last time we were there we noted that the next time we see the falls we will be unemployed. It is the 40th anniversary of the first time I visited NH. Lots of memories with many more to come.
It still doesn’t seem like we are on the road but it was great to be back to our spiritual home in the White Mountains of NH.
