Another Long Walk: Day 3: We're wimps! Total wimps!

June 2: We woke up particularly early this morning to hit the trail. The weather forecast for the afternoon looked bad and at hearts, we're wimps. We had no desire to hike in a thunderstorm in a drenching downpour!

The weather forecast for the day did not look good!

So we woke up early. Amanda dropped Blueberry and I off on the trail where we got off yesterday. Ideally, we'd connect the two separate segments that we've already hiked between Jay Cooke SP and Spirit Mountain, but it seemed unlikely given the time we had before the bad weather was expected to strike. Amanda and I worked out three possible extraction points depending on how things worked out which, in our genius for naming things, we called stop 1, stop 2 and stop 3. Stop 3 would connect the two sections we already hiked--it was the ideal place to finish for the day but seemed unlikely. The bad weather wasn't expected to start until about noon which we figured would put us near stop #2, but in case the bad weather came in faster than expected, we'd jump off at stop #1.

We were on the trail and hiking about 6:15 in the morning. Temperatures were relatively cold, but the sun actually came out for a bit which was nice, but that didn't last long. Clouds returned, and after an hour or two on the trail, temperatures actually seemed to fall even more. That couldn't have been a good sign! Temperatures normally warm up as the morning gets going--not drop! The new clouds rolling in looked a lot angrier as well.

We marched on, but I had a bad feeling the nasty weather was coming in faster than we had expected. When Blueberry and I heard the first, faint thunder, we decided it was time to quit. We were almost to extraction point #1 at Becks Road, and extraction point #2 was probably another two hours away. There was no way the rain would hold off that long!

I pulled out my cell phone and called Amanda. "We need to evacuate! Rain is immenent!"

"Are you sure you can't make it to stop 2?" she replied.

"We already here thunder! The temperature is dropping! The clouds look angry! No--we need to get off ASAP!"

Amanda seemed skeptical of our weather report. She's seen the forecast and figured the rain wouldn't start for another few hours, and apparently in the city of Duluth where she went to spend the morning, it was actually still sunny.

"It's definitely not sunny here!" I reported.

It was clear that Amanda really didn't want to drive out to pick us up. She was probably busy doing something that our call interrupted, and the drive to stop 1 was further from Duluth than either of the other stops. I think she hoped we'd make it to stop 2 so she wouldn't have to backtrack so far to pick us up. I felt a little bad about insisting that we couldn't make it to stop 2--at least not without a lot of rain in our future--but we had already discussed that we might get off here. It shouldn't have been surprise!

Amanda said the GPS said that she was about 20 minutes away, so Blueberry and I sat down on a nearby bench to wait. We admired the "Rain, rain, go away!" message that Amanda had drawn in chalk on the trail. This section of trail merged onto the Munger Trail which was a paved bike path. Amanda had driven ahead to all three stops after dropping us off to make sure she knew where they were located and left chalk messages for us at each one.

Although she clearly didn't realize which direction the trail was going because the message was upside-down for us as we approached. =)

Amanda arrived a short time later and we were whisked away to safety! We'd only covered about 7 miles today--better than nothing--but hardly an impressive showing.

We weren't driving in the car for more than about 15 or 20 minutes when the first rain started.

"Nailed it!" I exclaimed happily. "So glad we got off at stop 1!"

While in town, Amanda bought a skirt which she gave to Blueberry which Blueberry was happy to wear. I'm still not clear why, but it seemed to go well with the scarf that he carried. =)

To kill time the rest of the day, we headed into Duluth. We first tried going to tour an old freighter that was allegedly open for tours, but it didn't seem open so we went to the nearby aquarium instead and killed a couple of hours. From inside the aquarium, we'd sometimes look out the windows to see that the weather had turned truly nasty! Strong winds blew the rain sideways, and Blueberry and I looked out the windows glad that we weren't hiking in that crap.

Afterwards, we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch, wandered around Dicks Sporting Goods for awhile, then went to the theater to watch Deadpool 2 which we all enjoyed.

Late in the afternoon, we headed back to the KOA and wound up watching Good Girls in the TV room for most of the night. =)

This bridge looked a little wobbly.... like something out of a Salvador Dali painting!
But Blueberry braved across it. Then I followed afterwards.
We figured it was best to cross this bridge one person at a time!

Amanda didn't sign her artwork, but we knew it was her! And the message totally did not work! She said she left some artwork for us at all three stops but we'd never see the other two since the rain that afternoon would wash it away before we could see it.

Blueberry and I sat on this bench while waiting for Amanda to evacuate us off the trail.

Amanda was feeling a little cold this afternoon!

Crocs in the aquarium! Or maybe they're alligators. I can never remember which is which...

Snapping turtle

You can't tell, but that's a bear's den.... and a bear is attacking me and dragging me into its den!

Aquarium fish

This fish just makes me laugh. It looks like someone glued googly eyes to its head! =)

I took this video of the weather outside while we were in the aquarium. I'm so glad we got off the trail when we did and avoided that! It was brutal outside!