Landing back in Minnesota, I rushed off the boat to get ahead of all the departing cars. Shuffling up the road, it took no time at all to get a ride as the 3rd passing car stopped to see if I needed a lift. In addition, there was an added bonus since the fellow who picked me up talked about his personal ties to Isle Royale, where his great grandfather used to deliver Isle Royale's mail by dogsled in the winter. Neat!

The whole day wasn't going to be this easy though. This man was only going to his cabin right in town, but he kindly offered to drop me off at the main crossroads outside the Grand Portage Trading Post. At this spot, drivers would be turning on to the highway and going slow enough to pick up a hitchhiker.

That's right, I was going to be hitchhiking for the first time since Ludwig could only drive me to Puce after Cheney's in 2004⁰; since hitchhiking was the only option for travelling down to Duluth. The only car rentals available up here come with driving back up to Thunder Bay or paying extravagant fees for a one-way Duluth rental. Shuttles? Well, one of the lodges has a shuttle, but of course it wasn't running while I was here. There also aren't any Greyhounds, Megabusses or county busses that ply this shore.

This left me hitchhiking the Lake Superior coast, standing across from the trading post while car after car avoided eye contact and quickly sped away in Duluth's direction. Going into this I had no idea what luck I would have with hitchhiking in northern Minnesota, but the distance I had to cover wasn't far and people up here are supposedly friendly. I reasoned that it couldn't be that hard.

I was now waiting a while and losing faith though. Lots of online hitchhiking references stated how the practice has fell out of favour in North America thanks to horror movies and the fact that people aren't intelligent enough to realize horror movies are fictional depictions created in Hollywood studios. Was no one going to pick me up? Really?

0 - Ludwig was upfront about this before the night began.

I thanked my lucky stars as a brown Grand Caravan pulled over after close to an hour. A friendly fellow in his 60s was driving and going all the way to Grand Marais too, the village about an hour away where I splurged on a motel room for tonight. I was happy to be done with hitchhiking for today.

The only sad part was when I explained that I was here solely on vacation and adventure, while he was headed to Grand Marais to visit the long-term care center where his wife lives with Alzheimer’s. He also asked if I was continuing on to Duluth, where he also occasionally drives to visit his son suffering from post-Afghanistan PTSD. The man mused that he didn't know why everything happens to him, but the ride wasn't as dark and uncomfortable as it might sound; we didn't dwell on those sad occurrences and moved on to talk of work and sights along the way. (This guy was actually my 2nd favourite driver over the next 3 days.)

My motel came before the long-term care center, so I thanked my first hitchhiking friend and checked into my $95 accommodations at the Aspen Lodge Motel. The initial leg of hitchhiking was done & I'd made it to Grand Marais by the late afternoon.

In Grand Marais I found a town trying to be a tourist destination for families and couples. The downtown had live music, shops and ice cream parlors, none of which interested me, but I still needed to walk through to get to the Grand Marais Lighthouse. And for how much the busy downtown wasn't my cup of tea, it was nice to see so many people out for an evening stroll on the breakwall.

While it is a faux pas to walk many breakwalls, I liked how Grand Marais seemed to embrace theirs and make it part of their lakeside park. I photographed the lighthouse and hopped about the rocks and slanted walls until I started to get hungry.

Opting out of the touristy restaurants downtown, I uncharacteristically went and had a good dinner out by the highway on the edge of town. Afterwards I went into the local grocery store where I asked the teenage cashier if the water was safe to drink, but she didn't speak English & needed to point me towards a middle-aged lady who fielded my question. I'm not really sure what the deal was, as there are some Finnish people around here but I didn't think there were Finns to the extent of not knowing English. (I don't have a problem with not speaking English, I was just surprised by her apparent Finnish'ness.)

The tap water ended up being safe to drink.

I then went back downtown, and for all I'm criticizing it, there was a nice patio that overlooked the harbour. It was a glorious midwestern evening and I'm not one to pass up a cold pint with a view out over a lighthouse and a Great Lake.

The whole reason I went to the grocery store was because I needed food supplies once more. You see, Grand Marais is the closest town to the highest point of Minnesota and I would be tackling that this next morning. In a town without a cab company and only a regional hiking shuttle, I went with the option of renting a bike.

Leaving my pack behind the counter at the bike shop, I liked the fellow who was helping me, even as I usually despise mountain bike shop guys because of their elitism and love of bike parts. I wasn't planning on telling him my plans for today, but he had me feeling comfortable and he seemed alright.

And with telling him, he recommended a fat bike instead of the mountain bike I'd reserved, although I was against it due to the fact that I thought the tires would be too sluggish on the paved and dirt roads. The worker then brought out a pump and pushed down on the firm tires, explaining that fat bikes don't have to have sluggish tires, that they can be pumped up for different conditions and terrain. He told me not to worry about it & that I wouldn't regret the fat bike. I decided to listen to him.

Leaving the shop, he even gave me some last encouragement, saying that he knew I would be able to do this; to ride 27km (17mi) up to the trailhead, hike the 11km (7mi) to Eagle Mountain and back, then ride the 27km (17mi) back to the shop. I liked his confidence and he was changing my opinion of mountain bike shop guys.

About 2 minutes into my ride, I had to take a break to get the Cook County Courthouse.

There were a variety of roads and routes up to the trailhead, and settling on taking County Rd 7, I found myself struggling up a long, steady incline as cars raced past. Along the road there was a pair of handsome farmhouses, but not much else beside the odd home and lots of forest.

Hanging a right onto Bally Creek Road, this road wasn't a constant climb, and even had the odd decline while it headed through rural Minnesota forest. There were ski trails and rutted roads to distant cabins, while the majority of life was settled back along Lake Superior with no houses out here.

The fellow back at the mountain bike shop was right - the fat tire bike was working out beautifully and it wasn't sluggish at all. I could feel my chequebook giving me dirty looks as I was falling in love with another type of bicycle.

Bally Creek Road passed quickly and I was soon enough at the trailhead.

At 11km (7mi) long, with 600-ft of elevation gain, Minnesota's Eagle Mountain is classified as difficulty class 4, the same difficulty as South Dakota's Harney Peak (which I climbed in July 2010).

This might be my favourite difficulty group, one that's not so exhausting that it's a day-long expedition, but not so easy that you can bag it handedly. It's just the right length for a couple hours of hiking.

Located in Superior National Forest, there are campsites up here and I briefly entertained ideas of renting a bike overnight, but I was really looking forward to spending the night in a motel after a week on Isle Royale. Passing some of the sites, you wouldn't be wrong to want to stay up here and cut the Eagle Mountain trail into a shorter sunset or sunrise walk.

With worries of getting my bike back before the shop closed, and worries about it sitting unlocked yet hidden in a nearby forest, I made it up to the summit in good time.

I had passed a few groups and even had a few people pass me, but the number of people out hiking was clear by the 30 or so hikers at the summit. It was a fine day and still summer vacation for students, so I supposed these numbers weren't unreasonable.

I particularly enjoyed how one dude came over and congratulated me after seeing me cycling on the secluded woods road, then eventually finding me up here. I thanked him for the congratulations like the big phony I am, seeing as you usually don't find me biking 54km (34mi) and hiking 11km (7mi) on the average day, haha.

Eagle Mountain! State highpoint #18!

Climbing down from Eagle Mountain, I decided to mix it up on the way back and take a different route, loving the fact that of anywhere in the world, I was here riding a rented fat bike on an obscure, rural dirt road in the northern woods of Minnesota.

The only downfall of this Devil's Track Road was that it continued to stay flat and even went uphill after slight declines. I wasn't sure how this was possible from the trailhead to the highest point in Minnesota, but I was starting to get really worried as time ticked away and I was making very slow progress. In addition, I had consumed my 4.5L of water that I thought would be more than enough, and was now stopping to eat peaches just for the juices. I could see Lake Superior in the horizon, but there was no downhill in sight.

As the clocked ticked past five and left me with only an hour to get the bike back, finally a spectacular hill led me at breakneck, brake-clutching speeds down into Grand Marais. Eventually I was back at the bike shop 7.5 hours later.

I wondered about riding to the trailhead in reverse order so you would get all of the elevation change out of the way first thing, but I also don't know if I had that amount of resolve in me this morning. Instead, it was a consistent slog with a rewarding relief right at the end.

Dropping off my bike and retrieving my pack, I raced through Grand Marais to the edge of town, finding myself out here hitchhiking later than I ever thought it would be post-Eagle Mountain. I had a reservation at Temperance River State Park tonight, so now I was left with my thumb out, hoping someone would pick me up in the evening hours and give me a 30 minute lift.

Driver #2 came much quicker than #1, when something like a Ford Focus or Pontiac Sunbird pulled over after 10 minutes of standing there. This guy was much younger, maybe in his mid-20s and he had heard of Windsor Ontario through it having a bad reputation! Ha! All the way up here in Grand Marais Minnesota.

We continued talking and another funny Windsor thing came up in regards to the Ambassador Bridge. After telling him the toll was now $6.25, he seemed fine with it, since socialism had brought me health care and good roads and "you know, it's Canada. You guys love fees and taxes." It was only after I explained that one rich asshole owns the bridge and sets whatever toll he likes, that my driver died laughing at the idea of a rich American owning the only bridge and totally overcharging a whole region. I had to laugh at the absurdity of it too, plus I liked how much this guy thought it was the best thing ever.

Driver #2 wasn't going all the way to Temperance State Park, but graciously drove me to the Lutsen gas station because he said I would have better luck there. The only thing was that the gas station wasn't busy and it seemed like everyone was heading back to Grand Marais, or taking the other driveway exit to avoid me. Night was falling and I needed a backup plan since I couldn't exactly camp here.

Noticing a store up the road, I went there hoping that someone was heading to my state park. No such luck. Back outside, it was getting close to being too dark to be hitchhiking on the roadside, but thankfully there was some type of abandoned bank or vet clinic or something here. As much as I didn't want to camp behind this abandoned building, I now had a backup plan.

And just with that, another van pulled over, this time aggressively as he mustn't have seen me until the last minute. Driver #3 was a man in his 70s, who explained that you simply didn't see many hitchhikers anymore and that was the reason for his late stoppage. He was also maybe the strangest fellow of all the drivers, as he talked consistently all the way to the state park, all in a monotone ramble...

"Now you see those rocks along the roadside, those are Moonwort Rocks, state rock of Minnesota, now the state rock of Michigan is the Plaster Rock, which you can find if you go south of here towards Split Rock, but I used to get some of that Moonwort Rock out of the ditch, but people call the police on you nowadays, people have nothing better to worry about then some guy in the ditch chipping off some Moonwort Rock..."

(I don't remember what the rocks were actually called)

"uh huh, yep, uh huh, yep" was my continued reply.

Noticing the coming signs for the state park, the man told me he was headed all the way to Duluth which was tempting, but I had reservations and lighthouses to see up here along Lake Superior. I exited the van and cut through the dark campground to setup my 1-person tent in my giant campsite.

I finished up my long Eagle Mountain day with a bit of a bath in Lake Superior, but the water was much colder and angrier here. Not quite the glistening cocoon of warmth it was back at Windigo.

After reading by flashlight without too many bugs since it was late in the season, I hoisted my food bag out of the reach of bears and hit the hay. Tomorrow was another day and there would be more hitchhiking.

Continue to Part 6