Mission Creek Trail

Another nice early spring day. Noelle and I decided to get outside for a walk on a real trail and so we headed over into West Duluth and the Fond du Lac neighborhood to hike what is called the most difficult of the trails that the city of Duluth maintains. I had been on the beginning of this trail before, it is considered a spur trail of the Superior Hiking Trail, but had never been above the junction with the SHT.

The trail, while not all that scenic, was not too muddy. The fine weather made the hiking enjoyable. Before we knew it we were on the paved Willard Munger Trail which we walked for a short distance to its intersection with the old Mission Creek parkway which is now a multiple use path. The trail here was quite muddy, having seen some ATV traffic, but it was amazing how remote the area felt. We crossed over several old bridges on the old parkway before we got to several creek crossings where the bridges had washed out. With lots of spring meltwater runoff the creek was high and the crossing difficult.

Finally, we made it to an intersection with the SHT, followed it northeast to the Mission Creek Trail and back to the car. It was a good hike and we followed it up by heading into Superior to the Thirsty Pagan for some pizza and microbrewed beer.