A Sunny Day at the Beach - Day 373

  Bring your beach chair and sun screen!

Of course, in the woods it was plenty wintery. I always love how snow-covered hemlocks look like the arms of a snowflake.

The main feature of the day was the Blind Sucker River. It's a short, lazy, shallow river that flows into Lake Superior.

The big question for us was, "Is there a bridge?" When I hiked it in 1999, there was not a bridge. However, it was also mid-summer, and wading the cool outlet was fine. We were prepared today with upgraded plastic bags, but we were definitely not sad to see this beautiful bridge.

Below the bridge, you can see the river angling away into the big lake.

We continued along the shore of Lake Superior, mostly just in the edge of the woods rather than on the beach. The Lake was the most calm it's been in days.

It even had a message for us. "Peace, man. Chill out!"

Today was packed to the gills. We hiked- with a long drive for access. We left our last host, the Gateway to Pictured Rocks Lodge at Germfask. Tom Funke (well-known in hiking groups) allowed us to park there even though he is on the other side of the world. Nice place for a group retreat in an historic building if you are looking for something like that. It sleeps 10, has WiFi, kitchen, bathrooms, all the usual amenities.

We did a shorter hiking day, hustled back to Germfask, hitched up, drove 90 minutes to our current location, and were treated to dinner by our new hosts. Will tell you more about that tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a full hiking day with long drives again. The weather is holding. We just really want to take advantage of that.

Today, the first 4.8 miles went fast- 2 hours. Then we don't know what happened, but we both felt as if things got harder. It took us 2 hours and 20 minutes to hike the other 4.4 miles. Well, we got it all done.

Miles today: 9.2. Total miles so far: 4264.3.

See Snow Stress