Iron County Run
I woke up to this sunrise on Sunday after spending the last five days in the U.P. I completed runs in four other counties: Schoolcraft on Wednesday, Gogebic on Thursday, Ontonagon on Friday, and Houghton on Saturday. Just one more county to make this weekend complete – Iron County. I stayed at Baraga State Park for three of the four nights, but I didn’t run in that county. I’m planning to run there on my next trip up.
The plan was to drive 9 miles south of Covington, which would be the starting point of my Iron County run. It seemed that if I just did the loop, it would not be enough distance for the 5k. So, I stopped here at the 9-mile mark.
I turned right onto Cable Lake Road and headed west. At the time, I had no idea, but I now realize that I was supposed to start the run about a mile further north. I was so confused as to why my distances weren’t matching the plan in my head.
Turning south onto North End Rd. again it looks perfect and it’s going very well.
At this point, it looked like this run might be a little more than a 5k. The distances were just not lining up with what I had in my head, but everything was great, and so what if it turned out to be a slightly longer run?
I continued on…
Then it was getting a little rougher to run. I had to duck under shrub overgrowth and started to think that this path didn’t get much traffic. There were some pretty big boulders on the ground, and I was thinking that this would not be a good place to turn an ankle.
The rocks got worse from there. I ran and walked through about a quarter mile of trail that looked just like this. Also, the mosquitoes were attacking me, and there were hundreds of them—just like in Dickinson County, but worse. At this point, I was certain I would go over a 5k distance and considered turning around. I had already done 1.5 miles, and if I turned around, it would be a 5k when I reached the car. But I didn’t want to go back because of the mosquitoes and the rocks, and I just wanted to see the rest of the trail.
So I continued on… It’s got to open up at some point.
Sure enough it did finally open up.
Found this old bridge in what seemed to be the middle of no where.
A beautiful river passed underneath.
So I continued on.
And on…
… and on.
Finally, I made it back to 141, the main road where my car is parked. However, I had already completed my 5k, and I had been walking about a mile to reach this location
I walked by a deer carcass, and there were probably 5 or 6 vultures scavenging the deer.
All in all this was a 5k run and a 5k walk, 10k total for iron county.
The plan is below. I plan to run this route first thing in the morning. It starts 9 miles after Covington on 141. Leaving the campsite at Baraga, (a county still yet to be done) but hitting this last county to the south of the U.P. then driving back down to where all the trolls live. Leaving at 6:00 am and I will reach my room by 2 pm. I will post this run by the evening of the 7th.
Iron County
Amasa
Bates
Caspian
Crystal Falls
Gaastra
Hazel
Hematite
Iron River
Mansfield
Mastodon
Mineral Hills
Palatka
Stambaugh
Any place in Bold and Blue are townships / towns / cities I’ve run anytime in the past.
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