We had a great stay with Mark, our Warmshowers host in McNair, an old railway siding just off MN highway 2 north of Two Harbours. His off-grid house and guest house are cute and cozy and he was a welcoming host. With a breakfast of waffles under our belt we headed south this morning on Highway 2 hoping to pick up some of the GNBPR a little south of McNair. Turning onto the route we were greeted with a “No Outlet” sign, Minnesota’s equivalent of No Through Road. Around home these are a challenge, here they mean you may have to backtrack 20 miles! That combined with the heavy rain again last night prompted us to say “nope” and return to the highway. The State Trail which crossed the highway a little further up and which formed part of the route was wet and
grass covered about 3’ high. The highway it is! Stopping for lunch in Two Harbours we tried to figure out a route to get to Minnesota Bike Route 41 without dying in the process on the extremely busy coastal highway. We found a bit of a detour but still ended up riding the busy new highway 61 to get to the Scenic Old Highway 61. With no obvious crossing we scared the hell out of some poor motorist as we dashed across the busy highway. Once on Scenic Highway 61 along the Lake Superior coast it was beautiful, we even found a candy shop on the highway which also sold huge ice cream bars. We rolled into Duluth on a beautiful bike path which took us almost right to our destination, another Warmshowers host as the campgrounds are almost all full on this holiday weekend. Tomorrow we cross into Superior WI and eastward into the UP.