Hiking is one of the main ways I take care of my mental health. It’s walking meditation for me. Being out in the woods is a key way to unplug and quiet my mind. My anxiety levels are much better managed when I get on the trail and zone out, so I try to do it as often as I can.
Both Regan and I love to hike. It’s our daily form of exercise, and a prime reason we moved to Duluth, Minnesota. It’s hard to find a better town for access to trails. During the week, we can easily pick one of the local trails within the city limits and go for an hour or longer. On weekends when we have more time, we like to head up the shore to explore some of the longer, more remote trails.
This weekend gave us some incredible weather after a long stretch of rain, and on Sunday, we headed up to one of our favorite hikes on the Superior Hiking Trail: Wolf Rock.
Up by Castle Danger and Silver Creek, the Wolf Rock trail gives some of the most amazing views. It’s never very crowded, either, which makes it even better when we want to get away from people. After about a half mile with some elevation – about 400 feet – there’s a kick-ass view of Lake Superior. After that, you can keep following the trail into the woods. All Trails says the trail is two miles, but since it’s on the SHT, you can go a lot further than that. After another half mile or so, you come to a campsite on the Superior Hiking Trail, complete with a toilet.
“Yeah,” Regan says, “and by toilet you mean a vault toilet, off the trail, no toilet paper, no walls, and when you sit down, your back’s to the trail.” Well, yeah. That’s a toilet. But hey – it’s a toilet!
We hustled for a couple hours or so, and when we got back to the trailhead, we were still ready for more. The weather was just too good, with that late fall sun and high temperature. We drove seven miles along the shore to Gooseberry State Park, which can be really crowded at the height of the fall colors, but yesterday was way less busy. Maybe because it was later in the season. We hiked up the Fifth Falls Trail and took in the falls at this time of year, and the amazing color still throughout the forest.
It’s hard to imagine a better way to spend a Sunday than with Regan and my backpack and miles of hard-packed trail along Lake Superior.