Willard Munger Trail: Duluth to Jay Cooke SP

Today was NOT another beautiful day in northern Minnesota. It was cloudy, windy and gray this afternoon when I decided to go for a bicycle ride on the Munger Trail. I drove to the northern trail-head in West Duluth and starting riding south gently uphill. My goal was to ride to the visitor center at Jay Cooke State Park. After about three miles I came to a trail shelter and stopped to contemplate turning around. It was starting to look even darker up ahead. I refused to turn around though and pushed on further south.

I rode past Ely's Peak, site of an earlier adventure, and stopped again under an old Mission Creek Parkway overpass. It really felt like rain this time, but I was stubborn and wanted to see what lay ahead. Soon it started to drizzle. I still could not bring myself to turn the bike around. I wanted to make it to at least the state park boundary.

When I did make it to the park boundary the sky really opened up. It rained pretty steadily. I took shelter in a strange concrete column/shelter filled with graffiti from the 1930s and 1950s.
It began to rain harder. I finally accepted the fact that I would be riding my bike downhill in a steady, cold rain. When I made it back to the car I cranked the heat and shivered all the way home.