Mesabi Trail, Day 2
Fri, Sept. 26, 2025, Hibbing to Eveleth, MN (38 miles, 1253 ft. climb)
Today we biked from Bob Dylan’s birthplace to the town of the World’s Largest Hockey Stick.
Friday was another beautiful day for biking the Mesabi Trail in northern Minnesota. But it was a little cooler — 43F when we started out. So we wore leg-warmers, raincoats, and bandanas around our necks. The wind had also shifted, so we had crosswinds and headwinds all day, unlike yesterday’s tailwinds. This meant slower progress, but we had all day.
We got a much earlier start after our eggless breakfast at the hotel. We were planning to have a look at the Hull-Rust-Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine just outside of Hibbing, but when we got there, Beth didn’t want to take our road bikes up a steep hill on a gravel road. So instead, I inspected the mine by drone.
The route took us to the outskirts of Chisholm, then past the abandoned Bruce Mine, and through the small towns of Buhl and Kinney. Buhl’s boast of the “Finest water in the world” on its old-fashioned water tower might draw an argument from the Pure Water Days proponents in our hometown of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
When we got to Virginia, we opted for a Chinese restaurant that had good ratings on Google. Unfortunately, they would not let us order off the menu — it was buffet or nothing for lunch. I don’t really like buffets, since you have a fiduciary responsibility to minimize your cost per calorie by overeating. Besides, this food was rather bland. But it gave us the needed energy to push on and it was nice to sit at a table.
Just on the east side of Virginia, we got to ride over the Tallest Bridge in Minnesota! This happened to be on US-53, which actually goes right near our house down in Wisconsin. It was only a short ride from there to Eveleth, where we loaded up our bikes into our van at the Mesabi Trail Station.
We made a stop in Canal Park in Duluth on our drive home, just in time to see the lift bridge go up for a sailboat that was rocking in the choppy waves. It didn’t look that fun, since it was much colder near Lake Superior.
We finally saw a DEER today! After driving three hours there, biking 80 miles through the woods, and driving three hours back, we saw a deer…one block from our house.
But we did have a great time biking the western half of the Mesabi Trail, and we hope to tackle the eastern half from Eveleth to Ely next year, when it is scheduled to be finished.
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TRANSLATIONS/BACKGROUND: “Mesabi Trail” = a new paved, off-road bicycle trail in Northern Minnesota from the Mississippi River (Grand Rapids) to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (Ely). For this trip, Beth and I are riding the 80 miles of the western half, from Grand Rapids to Eveleth. We hope to ride the eastern half next summer, when it should be finished all the way to Ely.
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LINKS:
Old-fashioned BLOG if you have friends who don’t use Facebook:
“Old Scouter” Facebook page if you want to follow big adventures with more pictures and video clips (but not unrelated personal posts):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066334039590
“Old Scouter” YouTube page (when I get time to edit after the trip):