Ranier, Minnesota, United States
Today, it rained. It started raining yesterday evening and it kept raining all night and most of the day today, with short periods of slight drizzle. Sometimes it rained really hard. The restaurant in our hotel flooded somehow or other--they were cleaning up the puddles when we got up this morning. We knew this was coming, and that our plan A of driving down to the other two units of Voyageurs NP and hiking some trails was likely to come to naught, so we had formed a plan B of driving down to the other two units of Voyageurs to get the passport stamps, visiting the local historical museum, and winging it.
Interesting side note: the average annual rainfall in International Falls, MN is only 26 inches--somewhat surprisingly low (average rainfall at our house in Goochland County, VA is about 39", but probably made up here for by the 64" of snow. We must have gotten 10% of that annual average in the last 24 hours!
We started the morning by attempting to wend our way to the Chocolate Moose, a local restaurant which sports glowing reviews on Yelp and Google for their breakfasts.
By the time we got there, we were cranky and muttering dire threats to ourselves about "this better be good!" because it was on the other side of the construction from us, and you just can't get there from here. We tried calling the restaurant for help, and we got a 12-year-old who could only say: "We aren't near the construction." Righty-ho.
We finally found the way there, but we did not (and I know you're waiting for this with bated breath) run into our Illinois friends. Probably they are still out there trying to find a way in.
In the end, I have to say, the breakfast WAS worth it! Hard to believe. I ordered the Pecan Cinnamon Roll French Toast, and Tim ordered the Wild Rice Pancakes. We figured these were dishes you don't get just anywhere else, so if the Chocolate Moose was going to have a chance to live up to its advance press, it should do so with something more than bacon and eggs. Tim enjoyed his, but mine was the big winner--totally delicious. I'm already trying to figure out how to make it, because this would be a great dish for visitors or holidays.
The quest is on!
After breakfast, we drove down to the Lake Kabetogama Visitor Center. When we got there it was raining hard. A group was gathering in front of the visitor center to go on a boat tour of the lake. They were already pretty darned wet, and they were only going to be wetter. As we were headed back to the car, someone else coming in toward the meeting point asked us: "Are you going on the boat tour?" No. "Were you going to go on the boat tour?" No. I pointed to the group and said that they were waiting; I'm sure she was disappointed: our leaving just that moment had given her hope the gig was cancelled. I really don't know why it was not. These residents of Northern Minnesota are made of stern stuff.
Our next stop was the Ash Lake Visitor Center. It is closed for the season (which we knew), but we were hoping that, as the Lake Kabetogama Visitor Center had an outdoor passport stamping station (added when Covid closed all the visitor centers last year), there would be one here, too.
And there was. So we scored the hat trick: NPS stamps from all three of the visitor center sites in the park. (For those of you dying to know: each center has a different stamp. Someone at the NPS long ago figured out that these passports are a huge draw, and the more stamps there are, the deeper visitors will get into the park chasing them down.)
Had it not been raining, I'd have loved to hike the Beaver Pond Overlook Trail; the park video says that the beavers there are very curious and come out to see who shows up (if you can believe what the park video says), but it had been raining for roughly 15 hours by then, and the trails were of the mud-up-to-your-knees variety. I would have liked to have been eyeballed by a beaver. Oh well. You do what you can and cut your losses. So we headed back to the hotel for a break, during which I ate the leftovers from Saturday night's dinner for lunch.
In the afternoon, we headed to the Koochiching County Historical Museum, which turns out to be the Bronko Nagurski Museum and Koochiching County Historical Museum AND the whole thing is in Smokey Bear Park.
Three tourist sites for the price of one (which is $3 per person today only, because the annex at the back is closed; usual price, $4). No photos are allowed in the museum at any time--even without a flash, so I had to take a few notes. My observations, for what they are worth:
The history museum:
There was not anything here that we haven't encountered elsewhere. The best stuff on display was some Inuit sculpture, and I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, as the Inuit have no history, as near as I can tell, in Northern Minnesota or Ontario, which is right across the river. I've included a couple of pictures of Inuit sculpture (culled from Google Images) just to give you a flavor of what it's like--I was quite surprised to find a collection with a number of pieces here in this little museum. The photos are not of sculptures that are in this collection, but they are similar.
I did learn a few interesting spooey facts, though:
- From the description of a journal of George Nelson, a fur trade clerk whose right leg contracted so he couldn't move it: "with his hell pressing on his ham." Apparently his comrades purged him with High Bush Cranberry Tea, but that did not solve the problem. Well: everyone knows that cranberries have no effect on hell.
- From a list of medical treatments: "Tinct Rhei (rhubarb root) is useful in diarrhea." Just add some, I guess....
- The Hudson Bay Trading Company coat of arms had the motto: Pro Pelle Cutem. The cote of arms was cute--moose that look like elk (but were later redesigned to look like moose) and beavers and a fox. I had to find an image on the Internet as I was not allowed to take one. Turns out that Pro Pelle Cutem means: "A pelt for a skin." And what, I might ask--indeed I did ask--myself: is the difference?
There was one display case of old toys--no idea what these had to do with International Falls either, but these little museums always end up being clearinghouses for stuff locals have collected. Some of these toys were pretty cool. Again, the photos are not mine.
Finally, I learned an Ojibwe story about a young woman whose tribe went fishing for sturgeon, but just before the fishing started "she got her puberty," and was confined to a hut with various herbs and smoke and so on (I obviously butcher this badly--the story took up three panels of a big screen and my notes are sketchy). After a few days, she could no longer hear the sounds of the hunt, and when she finally ventured out (starving, one presumes, since no one had been coming to feed her for the better part of a week), she discovered they had all been changed into sturgeon. They ate the wrong kind of sturgeon--the kind with a red stripe on its belly. Read the actual story here. (You'll have to scroll up one page to the start.) Moral of the story: leave the red stripe sturgeon alone.
We did the Bronko Nagurski half second. The museum was actually built to house the Nagurski memorabilia, as Bronko is the most famous resident of International Falls ever--even more so than Tammy Faye Baker, of whom we haven't heard a single syllable since we got here.
I'm not going to go into the life story of Bronko Nagurski. Suffice it to say that he was some kind of sporting superman who is in the college football hall of fame, the professional football hall of fame, and the wrestling hall of fame. I defy you to match that. You can read all about him here. It's Wikipedia, but the article accords with what we learned at the museum. It sounds like he was also an all-around nice guy, not terribly pleased with all the public acclaim.
The "wing it" part of the afternoon consisted of getting a few geocaches (one right at the giant Smoky Bear in the park) and our seeking out sites from which we could see the actual Rainy River. We found a few, but it was surprisingly difficult.
Due to rain, we determined to stay in and have dinner here in the hotel again. Tomorrow, we head out to Grand Portage, MN, where we will visit Grand Portage NM, and stay in the Grand Portage Casino, because that's all there is.
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2021-09-24
Nagurski AND Henl(e)ys! Who could ask for more??? Thanks!