Vagabond Tales- Looking South to Canada

We were on and off the water on our trip into Voyageur’s National Park today with Captain Larry. An absolutely beautiful day filled with some very interesting sites. Unfortunately, Onyx had to be guard dog in the camper but she didn’t mind. She got to walk around the campground and around the neighborhood when we arrived home. Pictures to follow.

6 1/2 hours boat ride into the wilderness that is Voyageurs National Park. Starting point…Arrowhead Lodge with Captain Larry. First stop… Hoist Bay. Ted and Fern Monson, from Ohio in 1938 set out to build a resort here. They dug their own well, salvaged wood from an old lumber camp and handcrafted cabins that still stand today. The ice house fascinated us…Ted built it 2 stories high…it held enough ice it would last them for more than a year.

The Monsons built this on what used to be an old logging camp. This small bay would be filled with downed pine just floating on the water…they even had train rails going into the water with some sort of a rig in the rail cars to haul the logs out. The remaining wood structure for the rails can still be seen in the water in the picture below.

The eagles have really made a comeback up here in MN. We saw …maybe 7 today. Next stop, Kettle Falls where one can look south to see Canada. They are called Kettle Falls because people think when you look down on it, it seems to look like boiling water swirling around the pot.

This is also where you can stand and have one foot in Canada and one in The United States. Harry walked under the bridge and looked at the grate I was standing upon and took a picture of the marker directly beneath me..

Then onto the Kettle Falls Hotel. Circa. 1918. Only accessible by boat. Closed for the season but we looked around and had our picnic lunch on the screened porch on the floor. The mosquitoes were crazy hungry!

Last Stop…Ellsworth Rock Gardens…Over 20 years Jack Ellsworth, a carpenter from Ohio used art and manual engineering along with natural elements of the land to create this masterpiece. Only the hydrangeas were still blooming today. He used to have a large collection of lilies, some of which are making a comeback since the state has been reclaiming the area.

Views on the way back to Arrowhead Lodge…

If you can see the birds out by the white marker, you are looking at mergansers, a type of duck. Captain Larry says they are starting to gather. Over the next few weeks, their group will grow to hundreds of birds and then they will fly south and believe it or not he says they fly to Las Vegas for the winter.😳 ( They have tracked Minnesota banded birds there.)