Meandering In My RV: Heading West

U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame

After hunkering down and doing more visiting for the Fourth of July week, we headed west across the U.P. of Michigan, top of Wisconsin and into Minnesota. We took our time with three stops over a week to do this. Our next planned visit was Voyageurs National Park. On our drive north on US 53 in Minnesota we made a spontaneous stop in Eveleth to see the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. We didn’t know it was there but saw the sign. It is a rather small place but what they had was interesting. They seemed to have stopped adding or doing anything after about 1998 other than adding a few more members and plaques. Maybe that indicates the level of historic significance in U.S. hockey since then, or they ran out of money and resources.

Voyageurs NP view near
Ash River Visitor Center

Voyageurs NP

On to Voyageurs National Park. This park is on the U.S. and Canada border. The name comes from the days of fur trade over 200 years ago when men, called Voyageurs (French for “travelers”), paddled huge 26 foot canoes full of trade goods and furs through this waterway. We learned a lot about those days and men at the Museum of the Fur Trade a few years back so we enjoyed seeing this actual waterway that they traversed. It was much prettier than I expected as I thought it would be swampier.

Split Rock Lighthouse

We headed back southeast to get back to the Lake Superior shoreline and Split Rock Lighthouse. When we got to the lighthouse visitor center it was so crowed and expensive that we just decided we didn’t need to see another lighthouse that badly so we drove a mile to the south to a wayside and took pictures from there before driving north to Grand Marais. We stopped a couple times on this drive to enjoy the view along the Lake Superior shoreline.

Grand Marais harbor

We spent a day in the quaint little town of Grand Marais, MN which is right on Lake Superior. We hung out on the lake and walked around town. It was a pleasant day.

Next, we moved just 35 miles north to Grand Portage for a few days. From this base we worked around storms and enjoyed the cool weather along the lake while the rest of the country was setting heat records.

We drove a few miles north one day to Grand Portage State Park on the Pigeon River which is the border of the U.S. and Canada. We walked a couple paths including one to an impressive water fall.

Lake Superior just north of Grand
Portage, MN - Isle Royle on horizon

The following day we visited Grand Portage National Monument. It was less than a half mile walk from our RV park. The monument is co-managed by the NPS and the local Ojibwe community. This is the site of the most prominent fur trade center and rendezvous point for the east and west Voyageurs. We started at the Heritage Center (visitor center) which had some nice exhibits and an excellent film. We then walked to the reconstructed community where people were in period clothing educating and answering questions. Everything was very well done making this a great experience.