2017.07.20-Kabetogama, MN

2017.07.20-Kabetogama, MN

We drove to the Rainy Lake visitors center for Voyageurs National Park.  There are three separate visitor centers for this huge water-based park.  There are 500+ islands and 655 miles of shoreline for a total of 218,054 acres of land and water.  We took a two-and-a-half-hour boat trip around portions of the national park waters to get an idea of this place.  These little islands are all over, on some of them they actually mined gold.

This canoe is made the traditional Indian way using birch bark and other native plants.  It is a beauty.  It’s also the reason the National Park is here, to honor the outdoorsmen called “voyaguers” who hunted, fished and moved furs and other trade goods around the area.  It was actually beaver pelts in the late 1700’s that started the development of this area and put it on the map.

The “grass” in the foreground is actually wild rice which the natives would harvest and save up for winter food.

This is a Minnesota milk weed plant.  The ones I’m used to in Texas are short.  The ones up here get to 4’ tall, or more.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any cocoons or butterflies.

We are staying at an RV park right on Lake Kabetogama.  The lake is part of the National Park, but the RV park is not.  If you’re having trouble reading the lake name we are too, it’s a real tongue twister.  We’ve been here 3 days and are just now close to pronouncing it correctly, that is without the locals looking at us funny.  If you break it into the correct syllables it helps:  Ka/be/tog/ama.