Minnesota, Part 7 - Voyageurs National Park [240625-26]

Voyageurs National Park is the second national park that we visited by boat, since most of the really interesting parts of the park are only accessible by water.

(Editor's note:  don't forget to check out our latest trailer Trailer 12 - The T42 Becomes the T43 (Orlando Theme Parks) [250119-25], if you haven't already!)

-----

Last night's huge thunderstorm passed through as predicted, and we had sunlight streaming through a blind that had been left open (for air circulation) when the sun came up at 6 a.m. Tuesday morning.  We closed the blind and slept for a few more hours.

After breakfast, we drove 82 miles (about an hour and a half) north to Woodenfrog State Park, which has the first-come-first-served campground we'd be staying at for the night.  Along the way, picked up an unintended hitchhiker:  a ginormous dragonfly-like creature that got itself wedged into our windshield wiper blade.  We kept hoping the wind would blow it free, and swishing the wiper blades didn't help dislodge it, so we got to watch its wings flapping in the breeze for most of the trip until Tom finally went out and manually dislodged it (ew....).

We also missed the opportunity to get photos of ourselves riding a giant walleye - maybe next time 😉.

After staking our claim to a site at the campground, we drove 6 miles southeast to the Lake Kabetogama Visitor Center.  Although most of Voyageurs National Park itself is only reachable by boat, NPS maintains two visitor centers for it "on the mainland" with Kabetogama being the larger of the two.  We browsed the displays in the small museum, and watched the two available films (one on Voyageurs National Park, and a Canadian one about the voyageurs themselves).  Then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening using the WiFi (on the patio until closing, and then from the parking lot afterwards), working on the South Dakota, part 6 blog post.

We filled the van's fresh water tank on the way back to the campsite - being swarmed by mosquitoes the whole time.

-----

Wednesday morning we were up at 7 a.m. to get ready and make the 21 mile (30 minute) somewhat circuitous drive out to the Ash River Visitor Center in time to check in for our boat tour.  We had a bit of trouble finding parking in the tiny, mostly full Visitor Center parking lot and ended up parking in an adjacent parking lot in a spot that looked like it might be intended for folks with boat trailers; but we checked with the ranger in the VC and she confirmed that it was fine that we parked there.  Compared to the VC at Lake Kabetogama, there's not really much to the one at Ash River - just a small gift shop (which is where you also check in for your boat tour) with a somewhat quaint/cozy little waiting room next to it.

The exterior walls of the (detached) restroom building were covered in the most interesting moths (?) though; yellow and purple - and very fuzzy/furry!  We have no idea what they found so fascinating about the restroom building walls, but they were there in the morning when we arrived and still there in the evening when we returned.

We went to the designated gathering spot at 9:45 with the rest of our group - or rather almost the rest of our group.  One passenger - "Rita" - had failed to check in (or cancel her reservation) and they spent the next 15 minutes trying to get hold of her, but never did.  We finally boarded and departed at 10:00, but the mysterious "Rita" was topic of random jokes throughout the rest of the day amongst the passengers.

The boat tour was actually pretty nice.  There was enough seating for everyone inside the cabin, and enough room outside to walk around for those who folks who cared to.  Ranger Kendra did occasional narration of the sights and history, and Captain John kept an eye out for wildlife.  By the end of the day, we had seen 5 bald eagles (and their assorted nests) and a loon - but no land based wild life (read as:  "still no moose sightings!").

Seemingly as a reminder of exactly how close we were to the Canadian border, this boat sped past us at one point.

Our first stop was at Stevens Island, named for I. W. Stevens who operated a one-man resort there for 28 years, and then after that lived another 20 years there alone in relative isolation.  “I love solitude, I love the wilderness, I love the wildlife. I do not like crowds. I do not like the city, where even the snow is dirty. I like my own company. I don’t want to live if I can’t take care of myself.” He heated his cabin with wood, grew his own vegetables, ground wheat and baked his own bread, read by gaslight, hauled water from the lake, in the winter chopping through thick ice. Civilization was 16 miles by boat or four miles on skis. He left at age 94, and lived to be 104.

The "Stevens Cottage" was locked up, so you could only see the exterior.

The "Pine Cove Cabin" is currently being restored and open to visitors, though, so we were able to pop inside for a look - and admire some of the views that I.W. Stevens himself used to look out on.

According to Google Maps, we actually wandered across the international border for awhile on the way to our next stop.  We're guessing that no one actually cares, though, as long as you don't try stopping anywhere while on the "wrong side".

The "main" stop of the tour was at Kettle Falls - a somewhat disappointingly named location since there aren't actually falls there, and haven't been since 1910 when the falls were destroyed in the construction of the dam.  After docking, we made our way to the historic Kettle Falls Hotel.  Although nowhere near as nice as some of the grand hotels in the NPS system (like the Ahwahnee or Many Glacier), it has the distinction of being the only lodging available in Voyageurs National Park - and also has a screened porch where you can sit and have lunch while getting a minor respite from the mosquitoes ("minor" largely because the screens have some rather large holes in them, so the reasonably intelligent mosquitoes can still get in).

Ranger Kendra had recommended that we pop into the bar, even if we didn't want to buy anything, to check out the floor.  It was quite . . . unique, and we imagine can pose quite a problem for anyone who has "had a few too many" 😉.

After lunch we walked down to the dam to take some photos.

Kettle Falls is also one of the few places in the U.S. where, due to some interesting border negotiations back in 1842, you can look south toward Canada.  So we had to take a photo of Canada in front of the conveniently placed compass in the ground.

The last stop on our tour was in Hoist Bay - so named because back in the early 1900's a hoist machine was built here by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company to hoist logs (that had been cut upriver and floated to this location) out of the water and onto awaiting railroad cars for transportation.  The remnants of some of the old railroad pilings can still be seen sticking out of the water.

After logging operations ceased in 1929, the site sat dormant for 10 years until a family bought it and built a little summer resort on it.  The resort ran for 35 years, and we could see the old cabins on shore.

Also visible through the trees was the old ice house, where ice blocks cut from the frozen lake during the winter were packed in sawdust for use during the summer tourist months.

After disembarking at the Visitor Center, we found the official park sign - which fittingly is on an outcropping of rock on the lake shore - and took a photo by it.

On our way out we stopped at the Beaver Pond Overlook and hiked the trail, which ended up being a major disappointment as the overlook is way high up over the pond and we couldn't even locate the beaver lodge below.  However, we also stopped at the Voyageurs Forest Trailhead because we had been told that there was a beaver lodge visible from there, and were able to see it down a hill and through some trees.

-----

From there we drove 84 miles (1.5 hours) south-ish back to the same Walmart in Mountain Iron that we had stayed at two nights ago.

After a quick shopping trip, we sprayed the bedroom screen with permethrin.  After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening finishing and posting the South Dakota, part 6 blog post before heading to bed around midnight - happy that there were no thunderstorms passing through this time.