Voyageurs National Park spans 218,000 acres of lakes, forests, and streams in
northern Minnesota. Established in 1975, the park is named after the
French-Canadian Voyageurs who once navigated these abundant waters. Voyageurs
National Park provides exceptional opportunities for recreation and exploration
amidst landscapes rich in natural beauty, history, and cultural heritage.
The park consists of four large lakes (Rainy Lake, Kabetogama Lake, Namakan
Lake, and Sand Point Lake) and 26 smaller interior lakes.
Getting there ...
We had a late red-eye flight to Chicago on 8/20, and then arrived in
Minneapolis–Saint Paul (MSP) at 9AM on 8/21. After a short visit in
Saint Paul, we drove ~ 5 hours north to
the Voyageurs National Park.
- Arrowhead Lodge & Resort,
Kabetogama
When we arrived at the lodge at about 5PM, it started to rain
hard and we had to retreated to our room for the rest of the day.
Day 2 (8/22) ...
- Kettle Falls Bout Tour
This tour (from Ash River Visitor center at
10AM, 5.5 hours) takes you on a cultural and natural history tour of the
park. We boarded the Ne-Zho-Dain tour boat to cruise through the
Kabetogama Lake.
The tour first stopped at Stevens Island in Namakan Lake.
In 1929, pine logging ended. In 1932, Ingvald Walter (I.W.) Stevens
purchased the island with the intent of building a summer resort. In 1959,
at the age of 74, Stevens gave up the resort business. Stevens grew his
own vegetables, picked and canned blueberries, ground wheat to make bread,
caught fish, and hunted deer. Stevens passed away in 1990 at the age of
104, 58 years after moving north to keep his health. He lived alone on the
island for nearly fifty years and became a symbol of self-sufficiency and
independence.
The boat tour continued to the historic Kettle Falls
Hotel. Many centuries ago, Kettle Falls was a main artery of the travel
route along the wilderness border region. Around the time construction of
the dams at Kettle Falls began in 1910, the Kettle Falls Hotel was built.
Robert Williams bought the hotel in 1918 for $1,000 and four barrels of whiskey.
From its somewhat scandalous past, grew a long tradition of hearty home cooking
and hospitality served by the Williams family. This historic hotel was renovated
by the National Park Service in 1987. Located on the Minnesota -
Canadian boundary at the eastern edge of the Kabetogama Peninsula, Kettle Falls
is a special place where US is on the north
side and Canada is on the south side.
- Blind Ash Bay Trail
After the boat tour, we hiked the Blind Ash Bay
Trail near the Ash River Visitor Center. It's an easy 3-mile round
trip hike, but we decided to turn around after about 30 minutes on the trail
because there were getting more and more mosquitoes around us in the forest.
Although we did not finish the trail, we did see many beautiful and colorful
mushrooms on the forest grounds.
- We saw quite a few deer on our way back to Kabetogama.
Day 3 (8/23) ...
- Sunrise
The sky was on fire for less than 10 minutes when sun peeked
out of the small opening in the overcast cloud.
- Ellsworth Rock Gardens Boat Tour
We took another boat tour this
morning to the Ellsworth Rock Gardens from Kabetogama Visitor Center at
10AM. We cruised through the west end of Kabetogama Lake on the much
choppier water today. It started to rain before we got to the garden.
The Ellsworth Rock Gardens have been known as the “Showplace of Lake
Kabetogama” since the 1940s. Jack Ellsworth, the garden’s creator and a
self-taught artist, used natural elements of the native northern Minnesota
landscape as his artistic media, creating an original and distinctive art
environment on a prominent 60-foot granite rock outcrop on the north shore
of Kabetogama Lake. Ellsworth constructed 62 terraced flower beds on
the outcrop, which he filled with more than 13,000 lilies and other flower
varieties. He then accented his garden landscape with over 200 abstract rock
sculptures over a period of roughly twenty years.
Going Next ...
The rain stopped when we were back from the boat tour, but we decided to eat
our sandwiches in our car because it was still very wet everywhere outside.
After the quick lunch, it's time to start our 5-hour drive back to
Minneapolis (with a coffee
and snack break at Kunnari's Kitchen & Coffee House in Virginia, MN) to conclude
our short visit to the Voyageurs National Park. I think if we come back to
Voyageurs again in the future, it will be probably in the winter time :-)
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