Superior Hiking Trail – Day 7

Daily Miles: 16

Total Miles: 111

The hotel had a free breakfast this morning that was really great.  We met up for breakfast at 7am and tried not to overeat.  We have all been super happy with our stay at the AmericInn hotel.

At 8am, we headed out with Scout back to the trail.  We were hiking by 8:15am, with blue skies and cool air.  The trail started out quite different, butting up to tall rock faces.  We hadn’t seen that earlier on the trail, but it was really cool.

At one point, we took a short spur trail to see a waterfall on the Temperance River.  When we looked at the map, we realized that the trail must have originally crossed the river here.  There was probably a bridge that washed away awhile ago and was never replaced.  So the trail was rerouted down close to Lake Superior, then directly back up the other side of the river.

When we looked at the river above the waterfall, it looked like it would be no problem to cross it, so we decided to cut off the reroute and go directly across the river.  Beardoh and JJ just rock hopped across it, but Qball and SweetPea decided to ford it.  They took their shoes off and walked across barefoot, which was a bit tricky because the rocks were super slippery and rather painful on the feet.  But, we all made it across safely and quickly found the trail again.

We ran into our first thru-hikers today.  Jake and Sandra are hiking north with their adorable dog, Leiney.  We chatted with them for a bit and shared some snacks, since we were stopped for a break when they walked by.

Beardoh was pretty tired this afternoon.  He didn’t sleep well last night, so after lunch he felt really lethargic.  His afternoon got worse when he walked into a broken branch which gouged the top of his head.  It hurt a lot, but he kept walking and just cleaned it out at the next water source.

A good chunk of the afternoon was spent walking along several small rivers.  We talked about how nice it would be to go for a swim in one of the deeper pools, or to go fly fishing along a small river like the ones we passed today.

This part of Minnesota is heading into a “heat wave”, meaning possibly getting into the 80’s for the next few days.  While 80 doesn’t sound too warm, mixed with the high humidity here, we expect it to get pretty uncomfortable.  Hopefully it won’t turn out to be as hot as predicted.

Tonight we are camped at the Sugarloaf Pond campsite.  There were no usable trees at the campsite itself, so we are in the overflow area which has good hammocking options.  While it is breezy, it hasn’t really cooled off much this evening, so we expect a warm night.