Minnesota Lake Superior Drive

8/20/2007
We left Grand Portage heading for Duluth, MI. Route 61 is a beautiful drive along the west side of Lake Superior. It was an over cast cool day with a strong cool breeze and a slow drizzling rain.
There are many stops along the way with scenic views and walk ways to other views such as the one above of the hidden falls.

This is the hidden falls and you can see why they are called the hidden falls. You have to go up on the overlook and peek around the corner to see the falls.

This was another stop along the road to see this scenic view where this river emptied into Lake Superior. There were fishermen here trying their luck. There was also a rapids on the other side of the road which I have pictures of in my picture album. We stopped at a bakery in a small town to get some fresh baked goods. We spent the night in the Wal-mart parking lot in Hermantown which is a suburb of Duluth. The next day was another drizzly day so we left for the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan.

Grand Portage

8/17/2007
Actually the first part of this is still in International Falls.

This statue of Smokey is right in downtown International Falls at the Smokey Bear Park.There is a museum right behind Smokey which has two parts. One part is about Bronko Nagurski, for those of you who don't know who he was here is a web site to visit, that tells all about him http://www.bronkonagurski.com/ . He was possibly one of the greatest football players of all time. He played for the Chicago Bears in the 1930s. The other part of the museum is about the voyageurs. I'll tell you more about the voyageurs when I get to the Grand Portage.

We took a bike ride on a trail they have constructed that runs along route 11 which goes out to one of the Voyageur National Park visitor center. The bike trail goes through the town of Ranier. We rode it about 3.5 miles one way so the trip was about 7 miles, it goes further but that was all we could handle. On the way back through Ranier we stopped at a little restaurant and had lunch. I had a great patty melt sandwich. It was made on home made bread with cheese, onions and a nice portion of cooked just right ground meat. Peggy order garlic bread on toast. She said it was delicious. It also was home made bread.


This sign and statue is at the entrance to the little town of Ranier.

These flowers were all over the place along the bike trail. I don't know what they are called but they certainly add color at this time of year this far north because all of the spring flowers are gone in fact they are getting ready for winter. Their tourist season is over about August 17th.

8/18/2007
We left International Falls and drove through Canada to Grand Portage, Minnesota. We were pleasantly surprise on entering Canada. It was the first time in about four crossings that we weren't searched. We were begining to think we looked dishonest. From the stories were heard we thought we would have a problem crossing back into the US. Again we were pleasantly surprised. The guard even was joking with us and let us go straight through. One of the things that probably helped was that we had our passports with us. I hate the thoughts of having to get a new one in a couple of years, the price of them has gone sky high. The drive on Canada route 11 was beautiful there are so many lakes. The biggest part of Rainy Lake is in Canada. The road is a good two lane black top with little traffic.

When we crossed back into the U.S. this was our first view of Lake Superior.

This was our campground at Grand Portage. It had this great view of Lake Superior. It had full hook ups and as you can see it had no trees so our satellite worked fine. It did have more RVs than the picture shows but it wasn't full by any means.

8/19/2007

The campground was just off route 61 which is a scenic drive along Lake Superior and goes all the way to Duluth. We went back up it to the Voyageur State Park, it is right at the border crossing. There is a falls in the park which is the highest falls in Minnesota. I guess that's why they call it High Falls. The following pictures are from the park.

I had to put both of these pictures in even though they are not real sharp. The little fellow wouldn't stay still for me but a fellow on the trail that was watching said, " He certainly posed for you, first a frontal view then a side view." So here is the frontal view

and here is the side view.

While most of the country was having 100 degree weather it was cool up here, about 60 degrees, with a cool breeze off Lake Superior. The blue coat Peggy has on she made. The red plaid coat is mine which she hates but in this Paul Bunyan country it is very appropriate. The blue wool shirt around her legs is mine also which I had taken off because I was too warm.

This view though not very scenic is across the river into Canada. The falls are to the left. If you blow the picture up and look close you can see the remains of an old flume. The loggers used it to get their logs around the falls.

View of High Falls. There is an other falls up the river about a mile but we didn't go to it. It's called the Middle Falls and isn't as high as this one. These falls are the reason for this area being called the Grand Portage. The Indians and the Voyageurs had to portage 9 miles around this area to start their voyage back to their forts or depots.

This portly gentleman was one of the park employees that dressed in period attire and told the stories about the times. He and some other employees build birch bark canoes and snow shoes. He was extremely knowledgeable. He has been doing this for 25 years and really loves his work. He explained that there were two types of voyageurs. One came from Montreal and brought the trade goods to this depot and returned with the furs the other voyageurs brought. The other type voyageur brought the furs from the Indians to this depot picked up the trade goods and went back and spent the winter with the Indians or at the depots. They didn't like each other and when they got together there usually was some blood shed. He told us much more and in great detail it was extremely interesting. one thing was that none of the voyageurs were trppers, they got all of their furs from the Indians who did the trapping.

This is one of the birch bark canoes they just finished building.

This is a view from inside the Grand Portage Depot. He told us the walls were not built for defence just to keep people out at night. I'm sure he was right because it certainly was nor strategically located. There was a hill right behind it that any one attacking the fort could shoot down on it.

This sign explains the next picture.

The reconstructed Great Hall. Just on the other side of the parking lot was the path of the Great Portage, a nine mile trek. We walk about a block of it.

International Falls, Minnesota

8/11-16/2007
Let me give you a little information about Voyageurs National Parks. It is the newest national park. It was signed into law in 1971 by Nixon. It was opened in 1975. It is 219,000 acres, one third is water, most is in the four lakes, Kabetogama, Namakon, Sand Point and the largest Rainy Lake. The center of the park is the Kabetogama peninsula. The park was names after the voyageurs that canoed this route from about 1660 to 1850. They were mostly French Canadians from Montreal. They traded with the Indians for beaver belts. I'll tell you more about them when I tell you about our stop at Grand Portage, Minnesota.

Note: It is the only sign at a national park that I have seen where the name of the park is not in big letters.

Since the park can only be seen by water they offer boat rides from two of the three visitor centers. This dock is at Rainy Lake visitor center.

This is from our first boat ride at Little America Island. There was a gold mine on it. It's not the type gold mining I have seen in California or Alaska. Here they looked for quartz veins and when they found them they would ship the ore to a stamping plant at the city of Rainy. There they would crush the ore and with a flotation process extract the gold. It didn't last long because it was not very economical.

This is one of the cabins the park has left.

The building in the middle is an ice house. In the winter they would cut ice from the lake, the ice on the lake gets 40 inches thick, store it in this ice house covered with saw dust. The guide said it would last up to two years. The manager at the RV park says it gets to 40 below in the winter here.

One of the many islands on Rainy Lake.

Young bald eagle in it's nest.

I know you really can't tell from the photo but these are loons. If you ever heard their call you would know where the expression "crazy as a loon" comes from.

This is one of the gold mines on an island in Rainy Lake.

This is from our sunset cruise. Unfortunately it wasn't one of the better sunsets. It would have been better if there were some clouds to reflect the suns rays, but the only thing there was to reflect the light was the haze. There are more pictures in the Minnesota album.

Mitchell, SD.

8/7-8/2007
We camped at Lake Mitchell Campground. It was a small city park, very well taken care of. In fact we spent an extra day there because it was such a pleasant park. The town of Mitchell is big enough to have all you need and small enough to be able to get around in it with no problems. The Corn Palace was first constructed in 1892. The current Corn Palace is the third one and was built in 1921.


This is the front of the building. Every year there is a new theme and the muriel's are changed every year. The material used is corn of course but also, sour dock, milo, rye, and oat heads. The corn is sawed in half and nailed to the building. The other materials are bundled and nailed to the building, also. The cost this year was $130,000.00. As the sign says this years theme is "Salute to Rodeo"

This is around the corner on the right side of the building.

This close up is meant to show how the tie the bundles of material and nail it to the building. The only one I know for sure is the dark brown which is the sour doc.

The above picture is one side of the inside of the Corn Palace. There are more pictures in my picture album of both the Doll Museum and the Corn Palace.

Located in Mitchell, SD. in an English style castle, complete with a moat, turrets, and a drawbridge, this museum houses over 4,000 antique and modern dolls from the early 1800's to modern times. There are also 2,000 ethnic dolls from more than 125 countries.

I really can't make any comment about these pictures other than to say they are all from the Doll Museum in Mitchell, SD. I was very impressed by the displays, only wish I could have used a flash to get better lighting but I understand why they don't allow it. Some of the displays are not well lighted but there were more displays than I could take pictures of any way.

They had all kind of ethnic dolls.

I wish the picture of this display showed up better. There were two displays like this, one above the other. This is only part of the bottom display. These are all dolls of the presidents and first ladies. I know you can recognize some of them like Barbara Bush and Jackie Kennedy.

Badlands National Park

8/5/2007
I am not going to print too many pictures of the Badlands. You can see the rest in my picture album.
This is the view from the visitor center.

There are many board walks in the park which make it easy to walk to good overlooks.

There are also many good viewing overlooks with great scenic views.

There are more bikers here than cars or RVs.

Another walk way. Tomorrow we leave for Mitchel, South Dakota. The home of the Corn Palace.

Wall Drug

8/4/2007

On our way to Badlands National Park we stopped at Wall, South Dakota. It is the home of the famous Wall drug store and the free glass of ice water. This was the weekend of the Sturgis motorcycle rally. On the way there on interstate 90 we passed hundreds of motorcycles on their way to Sturgis. In Wall there was "wall to wall motorcycles." :-)

This is just one of the parking places that was full of motorcycles.

This is the front of the Wall drug store. It has more stores inside than a mall and believe it or not they have a small drug department. All recent pictures are in the South Dakota picture album.

Mt. Rushmore & Needles Highway

8/03/2007
Sorry, this picture is out of order but if I move it you can't click on it to enlarge it. Some how I missed it when I imported all the other pictures. This is on the Needles highway. As you can see it was foggy, it had just rained and was still drizzling.

We are just south of Rapid City, SD at the Rushmore Shadows Resort. We are getting three days of free camping if we listened to their talk trying to sell us a time share. We listened to their two hour talk but were not interested in buying the time share, which we knew at the start we wouldn't. Mt. Rushmore was only about 6 miles down highway 16. The town of Keystone is located just before you enter Mt. Rushmore National Park. They were totally set up for the biker that right now are all over the place. They have a special place for them to park and there were hundreds of them parked there. The National Park Service and the Federal Government now have a way to get a round the Golden Age Pass. They don't charge you to get into the park, they charge you $8.00 to park your vehicle.

This view is from a pull off before you get into the park.

This is at the entrance to the viewing area. They have a restaurant, a book store and they sell a tape you can listen to about the sculpture and of course rest rooms. The visitor center is below the viewing area at the end of this walk. They have two short slide shows, one about Gutzon Borglum and the carving of the mountain and one about the animals in the park.

This is the view at the end of the walk way.

This is further back on the walk way looking through the hall of flags. There is a flag for every state and the date it entered the union and what number it was entering the union. Alabama was twenty second.

These really are not wild mountain sheep like we first though they were because there was about five more on the grounds grazing also.

From Mt.Rushmore we went to see the Crazy Horse carving. However, it had rained the night before and the fog was hanging so low you couldn't see it, so we decided not to go in. We then took a drive on the Needles Highway. It's in Custer State Park so naturally they charged us $5.00 each to drive on it. The above picture is of one of the tunnels on the drive, it is 12 feet high and 8 feet wide. Naturally no RVs are allowed on the road. Our RV is 12 feet 6 inches high and eight and a half feet wide. Might be a little tight. :-)

I know it's hard to see it but the white spot in the middle is a real live wild mountain goat. Sorry that's the best my telephoto lens can do. Tomorrow we are heading for the Wall drug store and the Badlands National Park.