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.