Superior Hiking Trail Day 2, Saturday, August 22

Back in Duluth womp womp, hiked ~6.5 miles today

Woke up at 6:30 from a more or less restful night’s sleep in my spacious Tarptent, ready to tackle a big mileage day and get out of the bugs and the choking bog-forest. My dag-blasted left foot had other ideas, though. It hurt considerably more than yesterday when I started walking, and the pain wasn’t receding, and resting only made it worse, so I bailed at the first chance I could after limping 2.5 SHT miles. Found cell reception on the spur to the trailhead, described my situation via text to some Duluth friends, and miraculously two of them, Brent and Kristian were able to leave from Duluth right then to scoop me up. 

In an ideal world, I would’ve gotten to the trailhead, spied an accommodating bench, propped my leg up and waited for them to arrive. But alas, I wasn’t in an ideal world, but rather some gray, palpably still swampscape, where the only creatures stirring were billions of hungry mosquitos. So I had to keep moving, hoping in vain that somewhere down the road they might stop attacking me. Instead there were just more and more of them the longer I walked. What to do. After an hour or so on the road Kristian’s car rolled up, and back to Duluth I went. Hopefully a few days’ rest reverses whatever mischief I might have done to my foot.

Fox farm road, which i bailed out onto. You would think there might be fewer mosQuitos here than there are Among the trees and ponds. You would think.