We wanted to make backpacking part of our trip and decided to make our first foray into it on the North Shore. Once again, Silver Bay served us well. We could do a loop on the Superior Hiking Trail pretty much from our home base. There is a spur trail that ends near our spot and we found that we could do a loop – hiking into Bear Lake to camp and out on the SHT to a parking lot less than two miles up the road (where we parked a bike). We are very used to car camping, but got a little flustered packing up for backpacking. We ended up only forgetting toothpaste and a few “nice to have” items, so not too bad! The weather continued to be absolutely beautiful for the whole time we were out: 70’s during the day and down in the 50’s at night. It felt like there was an awful lot of “up” on the way in, but that made the hike out easier the next day. We got to the lake by around 10:30 and were happy to have an under four mile hike for our first backpacking trip.
We were not able to snag a site right next to the lake, but had a nice shady one up on the hill. We had the rest of the day to sit by the lake, swim and climb up and down the trail to our site.
We hiked out the next day and took a couple of small detours to check out another campsite and visit Elam’s Knob. The view was pretty nice, but we were more excited about the berries growing all around. We took a very nice break to pick two travel mugs full of tiny blueberries and service berries. The hike back was just as beautiful as the one in, although we passed a lot more people headed in.
Blueberries 
So many service berries!
So …what is a service berry?
It’s a wild berry you can eat:) often on more of a tree-like plant and delish. We had a tree at the Hollow that we would pick and eat from.
Could the kids do the hike with packs?
Looks as beautiful as any National Park!
It sounds like it is one of the more difficult hikes-lots of ups and downs. That being said, it’s not that long and if you are spreading your gear around, it wouldn’t be too bad. We saw a couple of dads and their kids there. I have to remember that you kids aren’t little any more! There is a short hike in to Agnes Lake, but that might be busier just because it is a short hike. I would say do it!
Bear Lake is one of the hidden jewels on the SHT. I’ve spent many hours running/hiking/backpacking there. Glad you had such a great first backpacking adventure!
Thanks Thom. We really enjoyed it. We didn’t have too many expectations about the North Shore and have been really glad we got to spend some time here.