I returned from a week in Texas on Saturday night and headed back on the road on Sunday morning for northern Minnesota. First week was volunteering at a "Camp Noah" project, but this week is just vacation.
Today, I got to hike a new trail at Echo Lake in the Superior National Forest. I explored the trail with two brothers-in-law (any way two guys that each married a different sister of my wife - I think that makes them my brothers-in-law), and we were out for about 90 minutes doing a 5 mile loop route.

This eagle was in a tree along with about a dozen vultures, so I'm not sure if he thought he was a vulture also or what. Other than this, we saw only rabbits on the road and a bit of Moose sign on the trail.


The trail follows an old logging road for the first 2 miles with cut-offs for shorter loops along the way. Each cut-off was heavily overgrown and blocked with down trees, so we kept on. When we reached the outermost loop, it was thick, soupy marsh and very overgrown so we backtracked to the next loop path.

We plowed ahead through prime TICK country all the while being accompanied by small clouds of mosquitoes. The Deep Woods Off repellent worked just fine and I got no bites.

There were thousands of wild flowers, lush grass, and many birch, pines, and poplar trees. We ran into lots of small blueberry bushes and wild strawberry plants but it's too early for fruit yet.


Most of the trail was dry, but we eventually encountered impassable water and were forced to slosh through, everyone getting their feet wet.

Back at the trailhead, we checked for ticks. We each found about a half dozen. All mine were on my socks, into which I had tucked my pant legs. Absolutely no ticks on my pants or shirt - both have been treated with permethrin!

So, a fun, short, wild hike on a seldom used trail.