I had an excellent trip to the Superior Hiking Trail the past couple days. I met up with Shug and Beep on the trail at the Manitou River in Crosby Manitou State Park on Saturday. We hiked out to Horseshoe Ridge campsite on the Superior Hiking trail. It was about a 2 hour hike with a pretty wicked uphill climb. I was feeling the burn! We got out to camp and set up. Got a little fire going, engaged in some great conversation...lot's of gear talk and food talk and we all turned in pretty early.

Got up early in the morning and Shug headed out solo back to his car at the park parking lot. Beep and I followed about 30 minutes later and Beep headed home after we got to the cars at Crosby.

I headed back to the Finland Rec Center and met up with Shug. We left my car at the Finland Rec Center trail head lot and took Shug's van to the Section 13 trail head. From there Shug and I did an awesome 5.5 mile hike to the Leskinen Creek campsite. Beautiful scenery on this hike. We set up camp and about an hour later Mr. Green showed up. He took the same route Shug and I did. After Mr. Green got set up we kicked around the fire and chatted. I was pretty beat and my allergies started acting up late afternoon into the evening so I turned into my Blackbird for the night at 9pm while Shug and Mr. Green stayed up later around the fire. I got up this morning feeling refreshed and ready to go after another great nights sleep in the hammock. I decided to head out solo back to my car for the journey home and Shug and Mr. Green took some time to have breakfast this morning before heading back to their cars.

All in all this was the best backpacking/hammock trip to date for me. I'd never done more than 5 miles hiking in one day so the 10 miles I did Sunday was a personal best for me. I'm not in athlete shape but I think I did all right considering. I generally do overnighters or 2 day trips so this was great to get my feet wet doing some longer distance hikes and it was a privilege to have such great company in Shug, Beep and Mr. Green. I'll be posting a few photos to my gallery.