Voyageurs National Park Boat Tour

Good morning, my friends. It's our last morning in Kabetogama. We'll be moving on to Silver Bay, Minnesota today. It was a long and lovely day here yesterday. We took a boat tour around Voyageurs National Park, something we've done before. On our previous visit, we took off from the Rainy Lake Visitor Center. This trip, we took off from Kebetogama Visitor Cnter. The tour was just slightly different, but still incredibly beautiful. I'll tell you about it in just a minute. But first, I wanted to show you that I've taken the first stitches on the second Stitchin' Wisdom block. There's still a long way to go on this.

We spent a leisurely morning, and then we were to meet the boat at around 9:30. We had breakfast, dispensed kitty treats, put on our appropriate boating suits, and then said good-bye to the kitties. You can see they're terribly despondent at our leaving.

Actually, they just wanted us to get out of here because there was some serious napping to be done.

The visitor center is only about a mile from where we're staying. They had a brand new boat for this tour, used only a few times before us.

It was a full boat. The lake was choppy, and so we were asked to be seated for the few minutes it took to get away from the dock. Masks were required while we were seated in the cabin. Once we were underway, we were permitted to move around freely, and we could remove masks while we were outside.

Before we go, though, let's just get the rules straight. No discharging of oil, please. And sheesh...no plastic either. Also, if you're carrying illegal drugs, now would be a good time to get rid of them. And, for goodness sake...no swimming behind the boat. We were going to bring our shadow selves on this trip, but when we saw these rules, we knew they would have been nothing but trouble.

Okay, so wave good-bye to civilization. The boat is setting sail on a three-hour tour. (It was actually 5-1/2 hours, but you know...Gilligan. And if you don't know Gilligan, then you're too young for my jokes.)

We sailed past the area where the campground is located. You can't see our rig from here, but it was interesting for us to see it from this side of the water.

Right away, we started spotting eagles...

and eagles' nests. We were told it was nearing the end of the season for eagles, and so we didn't see as many as they had earlier in the summer. However, they said there were approximately 50 breeding pairs in the park this year...a good showing for the eagles.

The lake is immense, and it has different names, depending on where you happen to be.

Here's another eagle's nest.

And there's the eagle. This one was particularly photogenic.

He showed me all his best sides.

I'm thinking he's practicing for some birdie centerfold to be named the sexiest eagle alive.

There are little islands popping up all over the lake. Some were populated with shore birds.

We didn't bring our shadow selves this trip, as I've mentioned. However, we did bring our cooler and calmer reflective selves. They are much better behaved.

We were on our way to the Kettle Falls Hotel. Along the way, we marveled at the beautiful scenery.

In this next image, we're seeing where the Ash River visitor center is located. One could drive to the visitor center and take a picture next to the sign with the lake in the background.

I wanted to get a picture of our boat captain, Matt. It so happens that Captain Mike was in the picture too. You have to look to his left and inside the wheelhouse to see Matt.

We passed by this houseboat. Houseboats can be rented from the park service.

Here's something we didn't see on our last tour of the lake. I. W. Stevens was a man who ran a "resort" on one of the islands. The only access was by boat, which meant he had to go by boat and then by car to International Falls any time he needed supplies. He lived on the island until he was 94, and then moved to...somewhere (I forget)...where he lived another 10 years. It was also notable that he survived a stroke and a heart attack during his time on the island. Obviously, the man was made of stern stuff.

This is the cabin where he lived. The resort was also visible from the boat, but just barely.

As we approached Squirrel Falls (Canada side) and Kettle Falls (USA side), our guide pointed out the barriers protecting boaters from going over the falls. We docked at the Kettle Falls Hotel just shortly after this.

From here, I'm going to ask you to time travel back to our previous tour of the Kettle Falls Hotel back in 2014. Since I'd already taken pictures of anything of interest and written a whole post about it, it seemed a waste of time to reinvent the wheel. The next several pictures and paragraphs are an edited version of our first visit to the hotel....starting right here:

After 2-1/2 hours on the water, we arrived at Kettle Falls and the Kettle Falls Hotel. We had a short walk from the dock to the hotel. 

And here's a satellite image of where the hotel is located. Much narrower waters in this area.

The plan was to spend two hours here, eat lunch, do a little exploring, and then head back the way we came. 

The hotel was used mostly by mobsters and gangsters during the Great Depression, but it is still in use today and hosts around 40,000 visitors per year in its 16 rooms. And this brings me to another purpose for these waterways: rum running. We were told that during prohibition, this was an entry point for imported spirits. Apparently during Prohibition, it was legal to manufacture alcohol in Canada for exportation, even though it was illegal to consume it. And just where do you suppose those Canadian distributors exported their liquor to? The United States, of course. Much of it came right here to the Kettle Falls Hotel. 

In the image below, you can see the hotel lobby. To the back is a door leading to the restrooms and to the bar/tavern/saloon. (A friend who hails from Wisconsin informed me that "bars" are called "taverns" locally, even if the name of the place includes the word "bar". We have heard them referred to as bars, taverns, and saloons, interchangeably.)

While we waited for our food to arrive, I made a little trip upstairs because I was told the unoccupied rooms were left open for exploration. Sure enough. Here's a room with twin beds, and there was another that had a full bed. The rooms were very small, and so I'm guessing a full bed would be as large as one could find here.

In the image below, you can see the little dresser to the right in the image above, along with the basin and pitcher. (I love those old basin and pitcher set-ups.) Bathrooms were across the hall and shared by all occupants of the hotel.

When we finished eating we visited the "tavern" at the far end of the hotel. The building was constructed without a foundation, and over the years, the settling ground and rocks beneath caused the hotel to become "twisted". There were some photographs on the tavern wall. It was built at the turn of the 20th Century. Here's how it looked in 1942. The pictures were behind glass, and I couldn't avoid some reflections. Still, I think you get the idea.

The hotel was renovated and brought up to code when it became a part of the national park in the 1980s, but the "bar" was left as is, complete with its interesting architectural problems. If you look closely in the image below, you'll see that the ceiling is level, but the bar has a distinct tilt to the right.

And check out the slant in the image below. There was a large rock under the floor in the middle of the room, and it felt as if you were walking up a slight incline, only to go steeply down hill as you walked toward the door.

These imperfections were felt to be historically significant, and so they were left as is during the renovations. 

There was also a "player" jukebox--something I've never seen before. The bartender stuck a token in the slot and it played a song for us. It sounded a lot like a toy piano.

You've probably seen the rolls of paper that make old player pianos operate. This jukebox worked the same way.

Here's a photograph of how the hotel looked after renovations were completed in 1987.

And here's the picture I took back in 2014.

The hotel dining room was on the right of the building, the tavern to the left. The picture below shows the screened porch on the inside. Inviting, no?

After lunch, we took a walk over to see Kettle Falls Dam. The dam was built by a timber baron who used the ability to raise and lower the level of the water to sluice his timber from harvest on the Canadian side to his mill in International Falls. There was another dam on the other side of the hill from this one, and on a separate lake, and there was another dam in International Falls. This man had designs on creating an empire of hydroelectric power by damming up the rivers all around. Had he been able to do so, it would have completely changed the face of the area.

Okay...let's return to 2022 now. Since our last visit, a very nice overlook has been built beside the dam.

You can see the dam on the right side of the image below.

Here are some informational signs. I'm hoping you can see them. Remember that you can make the pictures larger by clicking on them.

There was a compass built into the surface showing the direction of things. North (and Canada) was to our left.

Looking out, the view was spectacular.

Here, we were on the far side of the barriers. No boating here, please.

After checking out the dam, Mike and I took a little hike back to the other side of the island, where we would depart when our time here was finished. Of course, I took pictures of every blooming thing.

These little white guys were about the size of a dime.

We see these little purple jobs everywhere we go in Minnesota.

This is wild rosehips.

This I don't know...I couldn't tell if it was a flower or a berry.

Also, we saw this cutie-pie. He was just sitting in the middle of the trail, and he allowed me to walk right up to him for his picture. I believe this is a Pickerel frog. It looks a lot like the Northern Leopard frogs we saw at our last stop, but he lacks the stripes on the sides of his back.

Also...remember the grasshoppers I've talked about? I said they looked like butterflies when they fly with their black wings and yellow wingtips. Yesterday, I saw some actual butterflies with the same coloration. I think it might be a black swallowtail, although I can't see the tail section. There may be some biological mimicry going on here, but I'm not sure who is mimicking who.

After that, we headed back the way we came. It was an hour and a half boat ride back to where we started. We were heading into the wind, which made for a rougher ride.

We had just one more point of interest here at Hoist Bay. In the early 1900's there was a timber logging operation going on here.

This structure had been a resort previously, but the loggers used it as an ice house.

This nearby structure wasn't mentioned, but it looks like a barn to me.

As we sped along, the spray off the lake became a little too much for standing outside, and so we took our seats inside the cabin for the remainder of the trip.

And that was our tour. Lovely. This is our second time taking the tour, as I mentioned earlier. It's well worth driving out of your way to see this park. It would be hard to surpass the jaw-dropping scenery here.

Okay, so we're in no hurry to take off this morning, and we'll have a slow morning. We have just about 150 miles to go to our next destination in Silver Bay, Minnesota. It was the closest campground I could find to Tettagouche State Park. We have two nights there to explore the park, and then we'll be on to Wisconsin. I believe I'll have internet at the next place, but it's always a good reminder. If we disappear for a couple of days, there's no need to send out the posse looking for us. If we're gone at all, we'll be back in a few.