Voyageurs and Northern Minnesota

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Voyageurs National Park is mostly a large section of water located on the boundary waters of Canada and the US in the state of Minnesota. It is named after and designed on the travels of a group of French-Canadian adventurers who carted goods and traders along a route in search of furs (particularly beaver pelts) and in trade passed along blankets, hatchets and other items to the native peoples of the northwest. The voyageurs did not trade themselves, but brought clerks and partners of trading companies to do the business with the Indians. In a nutshell, the voyageurs were the truck drivers of the past. Their job was to get goods in and goods out.

Beaver hats were the fashion craze of Europeans in 1700's and 1800's . They hats were so highly prized, that beavers were hunted to extinction in Europe and the eastern US and Canada. The value of the pelt is the driving factor for the voyageurs. In the late 1800's, the demand for the pelts dropped to the point that voyageurs were no longer needed. Two very large supply companies came out of the time period though, The Hudson Bay Company (still operating in Canada) and the American Fur Trading Company in the US. We suggest reading about John Jacob Astor to learn about America's first multi-millionaire.

The area of northern Minnesota is filled with legend and fable. There are the voyageurs and the lumberjacks. The most famous fable of them all is of Paul Bunyan. A giant, he could fell a large tree with one swipe of his ax. His companion was Babe the blue ox. The footprints of Babe are what caused the famous 10,000 lakes of Minnesota. Those are fables. The reality is that Minnesota was the end of the a great many glaciers of the last ice age. Areas were cut out by glaciers. It created many natural dams that held water for lakes, or as in a previous post, create kettle ponds. Trying to create an easy route to the western edge of the continent, explorers used waterways for travel to and from. Lewis and Clark traveled along the Missouri River and the Columbia River systems to find the easiest path to the Pacific. The Voyageurs did the same with the Great Lakes and lake system of areas in Canada and the US.

Minnesota has an eye to make everything big. The pictures posted here are just some of the larger-than-life objects found in this state. Of course Paul Bunyan shows up in several towns (with and without Babe). Voyageurs are very popular, too. This is Pierre the Pantless Voyageur. Of course he really isn't. But some of the voyageurs really did just wear leggings and a breech-cloth.

There are fish in by the roadside and (real ones) in the lakes. "Up north" in Minnesota is a big fishing area. Some days at the visitor center we worked at, we had three large parking lots full of trucks and boat trailers with people parked on the side of all the lots and up the sides of the road for about 1/4 mile!
And yes, that is Sally riding the Kabetogama Walleye (pronounced kab-a-TOG-ama).


That's only two of the large animals and icons on the roads up here. We plan to do a whole post on roadside oddities later - stay tuned.

We really burned up the roads this summer. We visited Duluth when the tall ships came to town. We ventured up the North Shore Highway from Duluth to Grand Portage (mainly because we could not find a motel to stay. We eventually slept in the back of the truck in a casino parking lot. Tom had gone into the casino to see if they had a room. As he walked back to the truck, three ladies in a van behind them said they had followed us for about 100 miles. They were driving from Missouri and decided to go onto Thunder Bay Ontario.)

On the way back, we visited the Split Rock lighthouse – one of many built after a great storm in 1905 caused over 100 shipwrecks on Lake Superior. It looks pretty insignificant from this angle - but it's on a 300 foot cliff. It can be seen for a very long way out.

We cannot get internet access on our air card while in the park. We decided to get dial up internet on a telephone line at the RV site. We had to travel over 100 miles to get signed up. The company only services our area on Tuesdays, so we had to wait a week on that, but it has been worth it. It saves us about 22 miles a working day and both of us can play at the same time. While there we ate lunch at a nice Minnesota cafe - appropriately named.

We made several day trips - one was to Ely MN. Our main goal was to get fresh made bologna and sausage from a local chain called Zup's. Ely is the access point for the Boundary Waters Canoe Association. It is a National Wilderness with tight restrictions on boat access. One of the fabled heroines of the area was called the root beer lady, Dorothy Molter. She provided housing for canoeist for years before the Forest Service took it over. The forest service did not allow vendors to charge for staying within the area, so she lived on donations and selling her home made root beer. She had cabins, a sign made of paddles and other interesting objects. When se died, the Forest Service allowed one snowmobile trip in to collect her belongings. There was an incredible turnout, so the group managed to get lots of memorabilia. The town of Ely allowed the group to rebuild her cabin in town. The group bought a place, moved her belongings into what is now a park in her honor. The root beer was pretty good. The bologna was GREAT!

Another weekend, we made a quick day trip down to Chisholm and Hibbing. Many of the Minnesota museums provide a FREE pass that you can get if you have a library card. Since we were big users of the Int’l Falls library, I picked up one for the Chisholm Mining Museum. Very interesting collection – everything from mining machinery to railroad cars to old slide rules to (you guessed it) a Paul Bunyan playing a harmonica. We also stopped by mine that displaced Hibbing – they actually moved the town because there was good ore under it.

Our next stop was Hibbing itself – where Bob Dylan grew up and where Greyhound buses were born. We stopped at the Greyhound museum where Sally reminisced about her trips from St Pete to Tuscaloosa and how her Mom taught her to ride the bus safely. Then we ate Chinese for lunch in downtown Hibbing (across from the yarn/Frisbee golf store). It’s very hard to find good Chinese in small towns. This was actually a buffet and really good.

We again hit the highway on our next weekend (Sun-Wed or Sun-Tues, depends on the week). We drove back to Grand Portage to take in Isle Royale National Park and Grand Portage National Park. Isle Royale is a large island in Lake Superior. It is home to many animals. During the winter freeze ups, animals moved onto the island, so it is inhabited by wolf and moose and many other mammals. Ojibwe and Chippewa used the island as a hunting gathering ground. There was thoughts of mines as the European descendents came along. Striking out with mining, resorts for fishing were established. The National Park service is now trying to restore it a natural state.

Grand Portage was the exchange point for the Northwest company fur trading in the late 1700's and up till after the war of 1812 when it ended up being in the US. This was the main rendevous point where the “pork eaters”, voyageurs from Montreal, and the “winterers”, voyageurs from the interior, could exchange goods for trade. The park has built replica buildings and does re-enactments of those days. It is quite a place to visit. The picture shows the warehouse and canoe repair shop - that birch canoe is over 30 feet long!

Tom attended his high school reunion (without Sally). We drove down to Duluth the day before the scheduled flight. We found a really inexpensive motel at a casino. They have two hot-tubs, and we like to whirlpool.

Once Tom was at the airport, Sally found time to shop (for some much needed necessities) and play (at the Mall of America amusement park). Since it was so late in the day, she got a good deal on a pass that let her ride everything as often as she liked. Obviously, not many pictures – you can’t carry a camera on the rides!
Sally had to work the next week by herself. Tom on the other hand played golf with his dad, picked up the mail and partied with his class mates. Then he flew back and Sally came down to Minneapolis to pick him up. We had planned on going to the MN State Fair, but both of us were tired, so we had Mongolian barbecue for dinner. We love hot tubs, so we enjoyed the one at that motel also.

The next time off work, we madea big loop to see the headwaters of the Mississippi River near Bemidij - you can walk across and we both took off our shoes and did just that. It was quite a popular place on the Sunday before Labor Day - lots of folks out there cooling off.  This picture is taken about 100 yards downstream from the very beginning.

On the way, we visited the Lost 40 - an area that did not get logged in the early part of the 20th century because of a surveying error. A pretty little wayside hike of about a mile leads past some really big pines

Finally, we went to the northernmost point in the contiguous states. It is called the Northwest Angle. It is ther result of a much bigger error. At the end of the Revolution, the US-Canada border was agreed to be the route of the voyageurs up to the NW corner of the Lake of the Woods. From there it was to head due west to the headwaters of the Mississippi. But the headwaters are SOUTH of the Lake of the Woods. So that's how Minnesota ended up with a "chimney" - check your maps; the border really isn't flat up there. To get there by land you must enter Canada. We had four border crossings in one day. We also had to drive all the way home without shutting the truck off – the clutch cable was messed up and it wouldn’t start or enter 1^st, 5^th or reverse. Fortunately, we found a shop in Int’l Falls that could get it fixed up.

As you can tell, there is just too much to share - we are back down south now and plan to post several more about our northern adventures (if our southern travels allow!). Look for one on our trip to visit sister Suzi in the UP and the one with all the roadside oddities. And one with more about things to do and see at Voyageurs National Park.

Wisconsin and Family Moments

View Trip east to Voyageurs National Park in a larger map
Wisconsin is a beautiful state. But like Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota, the highways are rough on a vehicle (and ours being a house, it is especially egregious.)

We crossed the state in a short period of time and settled in at our spot at Kettle Moraine State Forest. A word of caution to those who plan to travel into and stay in Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources facilities. They charge $10.00 per day for out-of-staters to use the facility. You can buy an annual pass for $35.00, which we did, but that made the price of our four day stay go up by a third. It wasn't so bad about the pass, it was just that found out about it at the gate with no mention on the website where we checked the prices for our reservation. The price on the web reflected a non-resident price for the spot, so we thought that was handled in the reservation.

We will say this, Sally sent a note to the web designer and got a response back within two days that the problem as we saw it would not happen to others. WDNR has the pass information on the pricing webpage now. And it's quite a nice place to stay - pretty little lake and nice campsites. Convenient to Lake Beulah. We probably will be back next year.

A moraine is a glacial formation. As sediment was pushed by the ice and exposed by the melting glacier, it created rolling piles of dirt that hardens over time. Lakes and ponds are created when water has trouble escaping the hardened soil, creating Kettle ponds. There are two divisions of the Kettle Moraine State Forest. We stayed at the southern division. It is in a triangle created by Chicago, Milwaukee and Madison. This is a very popular area for escaping the city. Therefore is difficult to get reservations, especially around the 4th of July holiday. This rural area of corn fields and small towns becomes quite crowded.

Bob and Maggie, parents of Katie who, with Sally's son Stephen are the parents of our grandson Grady, are the owners of a house on the waters of Lake Beulah.

They have an annual vacation with the families each 4th. Bob grew up in Chicago area and Maggie is from Milwaukee - they have been coming out for many years. There is a lot of great family history in photographs.

There is swimming, boating and general relaxing recreation for some of the hard working folks. Locally, they are known as the "floaters" since large groups take floats and inner tubes our the the buoy and enjoy the water and a cold beverage or two. We definitely joined in on this hot weekend.

Lots of other fun as well visiting with Grady and his cousins. Here he is being introduced to corn-shucking. He wasn't very interested - but he loves corn on the cob!

And he loves riding on the boat!

Again, we want to thank the Murphies and Foys for allowing us to share some time. Enjoy the pictures.

As we wound down our time down in eastern Wisconsin, Sally flew from Milwaukee to Birmingham to attend a class reunion of sorts. Her sorority had a gathering and she took advantage to see some friends (let's not use the word old here).
Tom stayed at the motorhome and swam, bought supplies for our journey and washed clothes. He also got to watch a NASCAR race, the first at home in several weeks of being on the road. Everyone seems to have had a good time.

Tom moved the motorhome to a truck stop on the highway before picking Sally up at the airport. The journey to Voyageurs National Park was about 650 miles in a planned time of two days. We chose to start on Sunday to get a jump on the travels. We ate at Culver's (for about the forth time), a chain of fast food restaurants with "butter" burgers and frozen custard. Not good for the waistline, but good food. We stayed one night in a truck stop and the other night in a rest area, which makes the trip faster (not to mention less expensive).

While checking the map, Sally noticed we had a special attraction on our route. We stopped at the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. It was interesting and fun.

Interesting and fun are the things we like to do most. So join us next time to hear all about Voyageurs National Park and our travels around northern Minnesota.

The Oregon Trail and other delights

View Trip east to Voyageurs National Park in a larger map
After three fun filled weeks with our friends Glenn and Karin, we were ready to head east on our way to see our grandson Grady (and his parents, Katie and Stephen) in Wisconsin. We followed the Oregon trail from Oregon to Idaho to Montana to Wyoming to Nebraska to Iowa.

I-80 (and U.S. 30) follow the route closely.

This is the Wyoming countryside the first evening of our journey.

We traveled the western states rapidly, but we did make stops in places such as Ft. Laramie WY. The fort started as an outpost for trade with the local Native Americans. It is at the convergence of Platt River and the Laramie River. It was also a stop on the famed Pony Express route.

But the big claim to fame was as a stop on the Oregon Trail. The wide open pasture land and abundant water provided a great place for the travelers to stay a few days and get needed rest and supplies for the hard part of their trip. Ft. Laramie also was important in the moving of the indians to the reservations.

The site has many restored buildings and easy to spot military parade grounds. We have visited many forts along on our trip, but this one reminds us what we face with base closures today. The economy of the area pretty much died as the fort was abandoned. Our government does try to ease those pressures today, but back then it was pretty much goodbye, so sad. The people survived, but it took a long time to get the area back up to the population when the fort was operational.

Of course, we went to the NCO bar and had a sarsaparilla and root beer.

After a warm afternoon walking around Ft Laramie, Tom stayed home while Sally went exploring a fcouple more Oregon Trail landmarks. The neatest was a set of wagon ruts about 6 feet deep into the rock near Guersney, WY.

Nearby was Register Cliff, where hundreds of people carved their names into the soft sandstone. At one time there were names dating back to the 1840's but most of those have eroded away. There were a few legible ones in the 1850's though.

And some much more recent - the tradition still persists, though only outside fences protecting the older inscriptions.

There were several landmarks along the Oregon Trail. Scotts Bluff in Nebraska is a ridge that follows the Platte River for many miles. On the west bound trail, before Scotts Bluff, you see Chimney Rock.

It is a little difficult to understand at this time in history what the pioneers coming west were going through. We travel the interstate highways going farther in a half an hour than they could travel in a day. We drive across bridges in places they had to ford a raging river. We have the solid footing (albeit a rough ride) of pavement while they had to go over rock and wet soft soil.

Our life is very good compared to theirs, at least as we look back. Their choices were a hard life in the east, where they knew they could not get ahead, or go somewhere else with a chance to find an easier life. They gave up menial jobs to have a chance to farm (not exactly an easy life) in the vast expanses of the west. They wished to become dependent only on themselves, grow their own food, till their own land, create their their cloth and live within the means handed to them. Many of them had high aspirations of becoming self made, only to discover the life in the west was too difficult, so they wished for life back in the east at the menial jobs they left. Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it.

We stopped in Iowa for needed repair work on the motor home. We have spent too many dollars in repairs this year, but our little house on the prairie, big woods, on the banks plum creek, and by the shores of Silver Lake. Some of you may notice a theme, you will see more about that.
We got off the highway briefly and toured an imported Danish windmill near Council Bluffs. The community got together, raised the money to buy and transport the windmill from Denmark to Iowa. Then they reconstructed it. Quite a sight.

One night was spent at a fairgound near Winterset, IA. It is the birthplace of Marion Morrison. It is also the location setting of the Bridges of Madison County. We saw several of the covered bridges. By the way, Marion Morrison is the real name of John Wayne.

On the way east, we also stopped at Amana (yes that's where the refrigerators and air conditioners come from). But the story is even better. Back in the mid 1800's, Amana was founded by a German group who wanted to live a Christion, communal lifestyle. They shared the farms and stores in common. Some worked in the fields, some in the bakeries, some taught children. It worked well until the Depression, so in the 30's they put the farmland under control of a jointly owned group, and everyone got to own their homes and earn money.

On our fourth day in Iowa (we had only planned two days), Sally went to another Laura Ingalls Wilder home. This is Burr Oak, IA (no book about this town - it was a hard time for the Ingalls.). They lived in this room in a hotel where Ma cooked and Pa ran the bar and hotel for the owner.

The hotel is smaller than most people's houses today! For 25 cents men could sleep 3 to a small double bed. 24 cents would be about $65 today. And for 75 cents they could have a nice bath - but they didn't get fresh water. The last guy bathed in the dirty water from all the previous bathers.

Tom has had enough LIW on other trips, so he went to a sports bar to watch the NASCAR race.
Sally only has a few more sites to visit (Pepin WI - Little House in the Big Woods, New York - Farmer Boy, Independence Kansis - Little House on the Prairie, and Walnut Grove MN - Little Town on the Prairie).

Well that's about it - sorry we waited so long to post this. In closing, here are a couple of pictures or our beautiful country. We are so grateful that we have the chance to see and enjoy it this special way. Th picture above is in Wyoming.

And this one is looking across the Mississippi from Iowa to Wisconsin from Pike's Peak State Park. Coming very soon is a post on our Wisonsin stay and then on to Voyageurs!

Days with Glenn and Karin

View Trip east to Voyageurs National Park in a larger map
Sally and Tom are on the road again. After a fun filled, way too short, time at Malheur we have hit the road. We toured with our friends Glenn and Karin some of the high points in eastern Oregon and northern Idaho.

The Rocky Mountain Range extends from mid-Alaska to the tip of Chile. The range spawns great rivers. One of the northwest's most powerful rivers is the Snake River. It originates in the rugged Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and flows through Idaho and Oregon, carving out great canyons. (For more on the river: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_River.) One of those canyons is called Hell's Canyon. It is on the Oregon and Idaho border. It is a National Recreation site, and quite remote.

We stayed in Enterprise Oregon near the town of Joseph. Joseph is famous for its statues - pretty stuff. We drove a truck high into the mountains to get to the Hell's Canyon Overlook.

We have been plagued by rainy, cloudy weather, and our trip that day was no exception. Flooding was forecast on most of the rivers in eastern Oregon and in Idaho.

The rain held off until we had taken many pictures of this deep canyon, too deep even to see the river, at some points a half a mile wide, at the bottom. It is an impressive sight, even in the rain.

Glenn and Karin have friends that live on a mountain top in Idaho. Our next trek was to stay on their ranch. It was quite a climb to get to the homestead of Ace and Lori, but it was a beautiful area.

We originally parked our rig on a flat spot that turned out to be not so good. We sunk up to our axle. But not to worry (easy to say now), Ace has a friend with a track driven Caterpillar who pulled us out. There was lots of gnashing of teeth in the process, but we survived.

From the mountain top, we took trips to St Maries (pronounced Mary's) and Coeur D' Alene Idaho. We saw a few boats on Lake Coeur D'Alene that we would like to live in, but they are a little pricey for our bank account.

We also ate dinner at the restaurant run by Christina Crawford (yes, that's Joan Crawford's daughter of Mommie Dearest fame).

Pretty good meal in a lovely location and a very unusual sunset on the way home.

Next stop was way up in northern Montana. We had wanted to tour Glacier National Park in 2007 on the way to Alaska, but it was still too snowy. So we tried again this year. It was still too snowy, but we stayed visited anyway.

Got part way up the Going to the Sun Highway and all the way to Polebridge and Bowman Lake.

Polebridge reminded us of Alaska. A great bakery in a very old building, the Nothern Lights Saloon (soon to open under new management) and (according to Sally) the very best thing she has ever eaten. Huckleberry turnover.

Glenn and Karin are among the crowd from our first work camping job up in Maine. We also keep in contact with others, including Pat and Jeff. They were working at the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge near Missoula Montana. We drove over to see them, parking the rigs in the Charles Waters Campground at Bass Creek Park in the Bitterroot National Forest.

On the way, we toured the National Bison Range - it has a 19 mile auto route. We saw bison (with babies), a black bear (very far away), pronghorn antelopes, and an elk herd (also with babies). Gorgeous scenery too.

We re-supplied up in Missoula, but then chose to stay for a week at the campground. Missoula has a lot of interesting things to see. They have a smokejumpers school and base. The plane at left is the one they jump out of to fight fires in roadless areas.

They also have a carousel. Sally had to ride. She says that it only cost a quarter for children (no distinction between first or second childhood.) Picture courtesy of Karin.

Stevensville, the town closest to the refuge, had it's annual Heritage Days Festival. That's the end of the parade - a decorated crop sprayer. Besides the parade they had craft vendors, a tour of town in a horse drawn wagon and lots of other fun.

Stevensville was the beginning of Montana - St Mary's mission was started in 1841. So we had history too.

There is a nice brewpub, good restaurants, and we had good company to sit around a fire or two, so the time there was a lot of fun.

We are sad to leave our friends Glenn and Karin (and their dog, Cooper, and cat, Chico). The next adventure waits as we travel east following the Oregon Trail. See you in the funny papers.