On our own in the wild

On Monday we bade farewell to the folks and started heading West on our own. Our first stop was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan. I haven't been there since I was 10 and even then it was only from the shore. We made a few wrong turns then flew down the highway going way too fast to make the 1pm boat cruise. It was worth it. A beautiful sunny day made for some nice shots. If we had more time we would probably rent kayaks and spend a day paddling the shoreline. If you were up for a long hike/unsupported run the 40 mile trail along the coast would be nice too.






After a few hours on the boat we hit the road for Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. We didn't make it in 1 shot but leaving Pictured Rocks at 4 gave us 3-4 hours down the road.




When we arrived at Voyageurs NP on Tuesday we were a litte dissapointed. We knew going into it that Voyageurs is one of the least visited NP's out there and that it was a huge water park and a boat would be helpful in getting around. What we didn't expect was the scarcity of resources available locally. We walked into the NP visitors center and found 2 "rangers" on their first day alone. The reading material we already had was more useful. When asked how far one can reasonably expect to paddle in an hour one asked the other "how fast do you row? 4? 6 miles per hour?" To which the older gentleman said "I dunno I only row downstream. "

We drove down the road to Ash River State Park to rent kayaks for the trip. The entire town had 2 small kayaks that certainly weren't going to handle packs for a backcountry trip. Even fewer people here had any idea how long it would take to paddle a canoe out to a site. So we got a trail run in and crashed at a small state campground.




Thursday we went out in a canoe for a few hours and found the park to be very nice. It only took us 1.5 hours to paddle from Ash River to Kabetogama lake and another hour would have easily landed us a camp site. But with thunderstorms forecasted and not knowing how long it would take us, we turned around and hit the road around noon.

On our way to our planned stopping point in Fargo, ND Meg discovered this gem of a country store.




Here we discovered we were only a short distance to the headwaters of the Mississippi, so we pulled over and took a shot.




We stopped for the night in Fargo, ND. We were quite dissappointed to find out that Fargo is quite a busy town and not the quiet little backwoods town as portrayed in the movies. It's so big that it would have required some research to figure out where the statue they raised for the DVD release of the movie was located.