Lee (my girlfriend) and I drove to Duluth to spend the night and have dinner at Tavern on the Hill using a gift certificate given to us by my son, Luke.
We brought our bikes and stopped along the way in Moose Lake to ride a portion of the Willard Munger Trail.
The trail is 70 miles long and runs from Duluth to Hinkley. We only had time to do 20 miles of it (ten out and ten back, of course) so we didn’t see much of it, although I think we saw enough to know what it is like.
Unfortunately, we picked a less scenic part of the trail and while it went through nice woodlands and some prairies, there was nothing special about the scenery. Unfortunately, we were a couple weeks late for the fall colors, which would have made the scenery much better. I now have learned the really scenic part of the trail is the portion near Duluth and looking at the photos on the website makes me want to go back up next summer and ride that portion. At any rate the portion we rode was smooth and easy to ride. The trees are far enough away from the trail so their leaves don’t cover the trail and the wind has a chance to blow the trail clear (this id only important in the fall, of course). It’s nice to not have leaves to ride through in the fall when they can be slippery when wet and cover some hazards (cracks, holes, and small branches) so they cannot be seen and, thus, avoided.
We have ridden portions of the trail before on organized rides but have not seen the northern third, so that is definitely on our list for next year.
