Sunday June 8 we started out on the first leg of the Superior Hiking Trail. This is a 313 mile long trail that goes from Jay Cooke State Park in Carlton MN and goes all the way to Pigeon River on the Minnesota Canadian border. We will be hiking this trail off and on for a very long time.

We arrived at Jay Cooke park around 8:30am, after leaving home around 5am. With all the rain we've had the St Louis River was very high. Probably the highest I've personally ever seen it. We set out from the parking lot and started walking the Forbay Trail which would join the Willard Munger State Trail. We followed the Munger trail for 2.1 miles to the Palkie Road parking lot where we returned the same way we came. Along the trail we saw nature at it's finest. We saw a whitetail deer, cedar waxwings, ferns galore (I have never seen so many absolutely huge ferns in my life), American Robins, a female Mallard with 11 ducklings, wild strawberry leaves with dewdrops that looked like Mother Nature had fun bedazzling, beautiful Trillium in an array of colors from white to pink, honeysuckle, Canadian Geese, Columbine, Chokecherry shrubs in bloom, white plum trees also in bloom, a male Goldenrod Crab spider (which wasn't seen until after we were looking at the pictures and we've never seen before), Canadian Tiger Swallowtails, Turkey Vulture, Scarlet Tanager, a male Pileated Woodpecker, male Common Yellowthroat warbler, male American Redstart, Mourning Warbler (although the picture did not come out at all, it was enough to identify it), Chestnut-sided Warbler, Red-eyed Vireo, Tricolored Bumblebee, Chipping Sparrow, Chipmunk, and a Painted Turtle.

It was a beautiful day for a walk and we loved every minute of it. Can't wait to get back up there again!

Karla and Aaron