The Rest of the Story- Finishing Minnesota

 
After our night at the Voyageur Motel, August 17, 2009, we hopped back on my final piece of North Country Trail to finish in Minnesota. This was also part of the Superior Hiking Trail. Over the next six days we hiked an additional 69.2 hilly miles. (For those who may know the SHT- from Finland to Gooseberry Falls.)

This is what a lot of that trail looks like. It's truly gorgeous. Although it was hilly, our daily mileages were shorter and we felt pretty relaxed about the whole thing.

Except one part. This was the wettest we'd ever been on a hike. It rained, really rained, for three days straight. Everything we had finally got totally soaked. That's not necessarily fun. The third night, I was determined to start a fire, and I did manage. But I have to say that even for me, it was a challenge.



I posted quite a few pictures from this hike in other blog entries. I'll list them if you want to revisit any.

• See Closer In and Farther Out for an overview of the scenery
• See Berries! for some colorful botany
• See Makin' Tracks for probable wolf tracks
• See More Tracks for possible cougar tracks
• See The Coffee Clatch...er... Qoffee Quack, Part 1 a funny duck story begun
• See The Coffee Clatch...er... Qoffee Quack, Part 2 a funny duck story finished
• See North Shore Water Features for rivers and waterfalls

This cedar root is one of my favorite shots from that hike.



We had hiked over 250 miles since leaving home, our longest trip ever.

Marie's leg gave her no problems on this piece. Mine was fine for the first four days, then began to hurt again. Although I never had it x-rayed, the diagnosis was "probably a stress fracture." It continued to hurt through September, and I spent serious time sitting around with it elevated, and iced, popping ibuprofen, because I had plans to hike in Ohio in October.

Of course, I did just that. Leg was all better in time, and has never had this problem again even when I did the long mileage pavement days in Ohio this past year.

It's been fun for me to review this trail time. Tomorrow I'll be back to local, normal stuff.

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