Cascade River Hike, BWCA Minnesota

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Entry Seven: Cascade River Day Hike: Monday, July 26th, 2010

The Cascade River comes roaring down, it’s support system of rock walls dropping hundreds of feet in elevation and providing a dramatic finish to its travels. Since my entry to the Caribou State Park was already covered by the car fee from the other park, Temperance, I scooted past the entry gate to the Cascade River Trail.
The general direction is upwards, through thick woods on an easy trail that follows the river and provides excellent bank views of the various waterfalls. The trail also dips into some nice forests as well. I saw only a couple of other people on the trail, so it was a nice, solitary experience (although I was still fuming from the other park’s employee!).

Finally Hikin’!
In Sophie the dog and my 3-hour hike, we walked, viewed, smelled, took pictures (well, I did, anyway. She just poses.) and spent some time in the water. One thing that I was beginning to learn of this area—Lake Superior is really the only open, accessible area. By this, I mean that, for example, even the river was so full of rocks, many of the in awkward conditions and covered with a thick and slippery slime, that movement through the water was difficult. I was getting used to the various pokes from sticks on trees and bruised feet and hands (from trying to maintain my balance).


Nonetheless, it was good to finally do a little bit of hiking. We walked the east side of the river until reaching a sign stating, “Private land. Please stay on trail for next 1.5 miles.” Well, this didn’t seem to fun, so we ended out hike, meeting and chatting with some hippy-ish type folks in the parking lot. They had a friend visiting from Vermont, so they were going on a 3-day hiking trip on the stellar Superior Hiking Trail.

After a very leisurely drive back to the campsite, in which it was my intention after returning to repack all the necessary material for the next day’s trip into Brule Lake. It was decision time again, and I had the delicate choices of what to take and what to leave. However, being beat tired, I first hiked around the campground, viewing my own State Park roaring river (Temperence), then worked on photos in the tent, smashed a few more mosquito asses (producing bright, red blood spots in my new bright-orange Marmot tent), and drifted into a heavy sleep, camping material still packed where they were.

Gracias for reading the blog! Dave and Sophie the dog, Temperance State Park, Minn.

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Comments

[the minnesota man]

MINNESOTA!
Great pictures of the North woods! Way to get out and explore Minnesota. Nothing better than some nice mosquito bites and some camping! I just started a MN based blog. It's at www.theminnesotaman.com