Superior Hiking Trail (#1)

Our week long vacation took us north to Lake Superior, the Superior National Forest and The Superior Hiking Trail (SHT). We left on Sunday, August 17 and headed to my daughter's home outside Madison, WI for my grandson's first birthday party. She and her husband Nate live on a large, rural piece of land with their house and a large shed (where we store our pop-up camper during the winter). We stayed overnight after the party and left northward the following morning.

We stayed the next night on a friend's lake front property on the shore of Lake Superior just east of Duluth in Wisconsin. I have heard many tails of "The Cabin" from my step children and was great to finally have the chance to visit. We had the place to ourselves on a rainy, stormy and misty afternoon and night.

The waves were constantly crashing against the shore and the mist stayed most of the night. Sleeping in our camper on what seemed the edge of the world was exciting and spooky at the same time. Thanks to our friends for having us stay over the one night on the way north.

Here is a view looking west. On a clear day you could see Superior, WI in the distance. As you can see, our friends have a small cabin, shed and outhouse behind that. What a spectacular area!








The next morning we headed north. Our first stop was the at the Superior Hiking Trail Association office in Two Harbor, MN about an hour north on Highway 61 from Duluth. The office is a small house on the highway with a great store. The folks in the office were friendly and answered our questions. We bought a map for the area we planned hiking and again headed north.

Our destination was to Grand Marias, MN where we planned to hike. Grand Marais is about 45 miles from the Canadian border and our first stop was to Stone Harbor Wilderness Supply. I had some emails with the store about shuttling us for our hike the next day. The folks there were so helpful and kind as we purchased some gear and arranged the shuttle. They did not expect any remuneration (I tried) and arranged to meet us at the trailhead off route 58 north of town at 10am the next morning.

I discovered after making our camping reservation the Fall Lake Campground is 2 1/2 hours from Grand Marais. Most of the road is through forest lands which are beautiful but a daunting drive.
We arrived in Ely a small and now touristy town, got some supplies and headed the few miles out of town to our campsite.

Since we arrived on a Sunday there were not many campers. We both agreed the bath house was the cleanest, well maintained in any of our recent campgrounds. The hordes of mosquitos proved daunting and we put up the screen house for sitting outside. We highly recommend his campground and a big salute to the US Forest Service.