Ranier, Minnesota, United StatesWe went to breakfast in town and then headed out to the Voyageurs NP visitor's center at Rainy Lake.
Voyageurs NP was founded to preserve some of the territory through which the French Canadian Voyageurs traveled collecting fur (much of it beaver) for the fur trade (much of it for hats) in Europe. Some of those traders used canoes (most of them birch bark) which could carry 3,000 pounds of goods, and many of them (still in those birch bark canoes) traveled 3000 miles along the borders of the US and Canada doing their trade. Voyageurs, ironically enough, now protects the little critters that were once hunted here nearly to extinction. There's a little museum in the visitor's center and a short video about the park, and then there's a walking trail out from the back of the building. We took the walk, which is a loop trail and provides views of Rainy Lake across to Canada. Fall colors pretty far along up this far north. Lots of nice vistas. See photos.
While we were out on the trail, we ran into a couple who had come in and had breakfast at the next table to ours in the Coffee Landing Cafe (good food, but not very good service for us; something happened to our order and we had to wait 35 minutes to get it.
I had noticed this couple primarily because their food came in 10 minutes.) They stopped to chat with us. It turns out that they are from Gurnee, IL, north of Chicago and near the Wisconsin border, and we spent a few minutes talking about the University of Illinois, Amtrak, and various park sites we had all been to. This turned out to be more interesting than it otherwise might have because they were in the restaurant we went to for lunch, too. It's a small town, and there aren't many choices. The lunch restaurant was one of two possibilities near the park visitor's center--otherwise you have to drive back in to International Falls.
After lunch, the Gurnee couple headed out to go hiking in another section of the park and we headed to the Tilson Bay Ski Trails where, the park ranger had told us, there is a boardwalk out into the bogs. Here's the blurb from the Tilson Creek Bogwalk website: "The bog is an important eco-system supporting a variety of plants including the Tamarack tree (also called the Larch) At first glance, these trees look like other conifers, but they are actually deciduous as they lose their pine-like needles every fall.
What makes a bog different from a swamp is bogs are made up of a floating mass of rotting moss resulting in a soil known as peat. The decaying process causes the peat moss to "burp" in the spring time as the moss releases gas into the atmosphere. It is recommended to wear mosquito repellent as the bog is a perfect breeding area for those pesky bugs. Surprisingly, some of the plants in the bog actually capture mosquitoes and other insects with their sticky leaves and are able to break down their capture as a source of nutrient." Pretty interesting. We didn't see any methane burping (wrong time of year), but we did see some mosquitoes--mostly in one spot, and my handy-dandy mosquito patches (soaked in citronella) appear to have been effective in chasing them away from me, which is a good thing, because mosquitoes LOVE me.
We did see some Tamarack trees--see photos.
We finished there about 2:00 and decided to head back to the hotel for a nap. We have been going, going, going like the Everready bunny, as is our wont on these trips, and a little slowdown seemed called for.
Besides which, it was due to start raining. I headed out again about 4:00 to go back to two geocaches I found earlier in the day. These were big enough for me to drop travel bugs in, but the travel bugs had been in the hotel, right where they were doing the inside of my computer bag the most good. (A travel bug is a trackable geocaching gizmo--people set them up with missions, and cachers are supposed to find them in caches and move them along to others. Because of the pandemic, I have some that I have had for a long time, and they really needed to be dropped!) Tim took a little walk around the neighborhood.
We had dinner at Sammy's Pizza Restaurant. Sammy's, established in 1954, has won some big awards: in 2015, PMQ Pizza Magazine ("the industry's No. 1 publication"--they couldn't say it if it wasn't so, right?) named Sammy's inducted Sammy's pizza into the pizza hall of fame. (Who knew?) In 2018, Sammy's was voted "Best Pizza in Minnesota" in a pizza challenge run by Minnesota Monthly Magazine. We mainly went because our cat is named Sammy.
First we had a terrible time trying to get there--the streets in International Falls are all torn up--probably because the height of the tourist season is over and they're trying to get the roads fixed before it snows--and the place we parked turned out to have no access to the door of the restaurant. So we drove around through construction zones looking for the right way in, but it took two more tries. Finally, as we were coming into the restaurant, who should we run into but our friends from Gurnee, IL, on their way out.
"Hi, guys," we said. "Where have you been?" they said. "We've been waiting for you."
Mind you: Sammy's was not on the list of restaurants we discussed this afternoon. If we run into these people again at breakfast (we did not exchange breakfast ideas for tomorrow), I'm going to get their names and exchange contact information. Clearly we are fated to be friends forever.
The pizza, when it came, was okay. "It doesn't suck" is the final judgment. We've had worse, but we've definitely had better. If this is the best pizza in Minnesota, then there is an opening for some entrepreneurial pizza maker in the pizza market here. Come on down.
Tomorrow it's supposed to rain all day--sometimes heavily. We plan to go to the only other visitor's center which is open, the one at Lake Kabetogama (gotta get that passport stamp, don't you know!), and we will also visit the Koochiching County Historical Museum, also recommended by the park ranger. It's just about the only indoor site to visit in International Falls. (We cannot go into Canada because not only did I not bring my passport--we were never planning on going into Canada--but also you have to have proof of vaccination--check--AND a negative Covid test within 72 hours. No can do. Didn't plan for that.) We head out of here Tuesday morning.
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2021-09-20
Big bird, indeed! Magnificent. And now I want a pet weasel. Should I vote for Nick for mayor? Why not! Some of these photos are stunning. Thank you! And that mural is inspired genius.