Minnesota - Day 17 - across the state to the east

Vermilion Sunsets RV Park, Cook

Saturday, 17 September 2022

today's route

I covered the first 20 miles or so to the town of Warroad on Lake of the Woods, which spans both the US and Canada.  Warroad is the only US port on the lake, and I thought that name was odd enough to look up.  And it does actually mean "war road" instead of maybe somebody's name, as I'd hoped.  There was once a large Chippewa village at this site, and they often found themselves fighting the Sioux who came for the lake's rice fields.  The Sioux came to the area on the Warroad River (the road to war with the Chippewa), and the town took its name from the river.

Speaking of wild rice, this is now apparently harvest time for wild rice, and Minnesota has more acres of natural wild rice than any other state.  I've been hearing stories on the radio about how harvest techniques have been passed down through generations of Native Americans especially, although there are also rural white folks who participate in the harvest.

As I passed a number of tiny communities, some incorporated (e.g. Roosevelt, pop. 153) and others not (e.g. Ball Club (that's actually the name of the town)), I kept hoping for a look at the Lake of the Woods, which is so large that even the one-third of the lake that's within Minnesota's borders still makes it the state's largest lake.  And from the state that has more than 14,000 lakes, that's saying something.  But I realized later that the road didn't run along the lake's edge, and I never was able to see it.

I passed a house out in the country that was really unusual.  It was 3 stories tall, and it was square - and only as wide on each side as 3 vertical windows (which it had on each side).  It didn't have any covering over the front door or any porch anywhere to break the boxiness of it - except for a deck off the 3rd floor.  This deck was on stilts 3 stories tall and looked really strange attached to all that squareness.  I wouldn't have trusted the strength of those stilts.

I passed more sunflowers.

The litter patrol on one stretch of the highway was handled by the "Family of Dog Kisses."

My drive included intermittent rain/mist/heavy mist.

I saw a deer near the roadside that had the exact same reaction to me as I did to it - I saw it happen - and then it ran into the woods.

The road began to follow the Rainy River, which I think is the international boundary along a good part of Minnesota, running from International Falls in the east to Lake of the Woods in the west.

I saw intermittent crop fields - mostly grain with some sunflowers - separated by thick swaths of trees.  Lots of the fields have been plowed under.  Also occasional small herds of cows, lots of creeks, and occasional farmhouses.

I've noticed that many of the churches I've seen are Lutheran, which I think is a denomination often associated with Scandinavian countries.  And folks from that part of the world were coming to settle in Minnesota even before it was a territory.  Anyway, I looked it up and yes, Protestants are the dominant branch of religion here and yes, Lutherans dominate the Protestants here.

I noticed a mail box along the road that was on an extremely tall pole, and it was labeled "Air Mail."  Like the one I saw in - was it Montana?

It was almost 2½ hours after we started that we arrived in the town of International Falls, pop. 5,802.  It did occur to me to wonder if there were any actual waterfalls at International Falls, and the answer is yes, the Koochiching Falls are there.  But as I understood it, I'd pretty much have to go to Canada to see them - a little like Niagara Falls in New York that aren't really visible from New York.  And since I don't have a passport, that was out.  

Instead, we stopped at the empty parking lot of a church/school and stretched our legs and had some lunch.

The highway signs up here showed kilometers as well as miles.

We passed a turn for Voyageurs National Park, which wasn't one I'd ever heard of, and later we stopped at a rest area that had a National Park Service brochure for them.  That brochure told me that Voyageurs is a water-based park.  There aren't really any roads, and visitors are expected to do their traveling by the watercraft of their choice.  Visitors are encouraged to "always know where you are on the water" because of it sitting smack on an international border.  The brochure even has a QR code that produces navigational details.

The brochure says this park is "one of the few places in North America where you can see and touch rocks half the age of the Earth."  One of the reasons for establishing the park was its historical significance as the "customary waterway" (per the 1783 treaty that ended the American Revolution), which forms the international boundary between Lake Superior and Lake of the Woods.  The "voyageurs" were the people associated with the fur trade especially.

I'm continually astounded at the extraordinary breadth of experiences that make up both the history and the present reality of our country.

From International Falls I headed southeast, first to Orr, where we stopped at a small wayside park on Pelican Lake.

I learned there that this little wayside park had been built by the CCC, and there was an informational sign there.

This is the sign (see enlarged text below).

And this is the enlarged text.

Dext and I walked down the hill to that grassy patch, until I noticed it headed for a dock that was popular with Canada geese (and likely their poop), so I cut our walk short.

And from Orr we went a little farther to Cook, pop. 574, "Gateway for Lake Vermilion."  In town, I turned down a narrow road that led to the lake, though I didn't go that far.  Instead, I stopped at Timbuktu Marine (I have no idea where the name came from) which was so far away from water that I wondered how they got business.  But it seemed to be a busy place, so I guess they get business somehow.

Anyway, tonight's campground is apparently owned by the marine folks, which is why I needed to check in there.  And that all seemed normal, but the campground didn't.  It was essentially one short gravel road with 15 gravel sites for RVs (none for tents), perched over a shallow valley that I was afraid my RV would slide into if I parked too close to the edge.  It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't worth the $35 they charged me - for instance, I never did figure out where the bathrooms were.  And my internet connection was poor-to-nonexistent.

And thank goodness I only had one dog; if I'd still had Gracie, we'd never have been able to go out for walks because of all the other dogs at all the other RVs parked along this narrow road.  Very strange.  And despite the "vermilion sunsets" in the park's name, the day had been overcast all along, and I couldn't see anything at all like a sunset.  Too bad.