Boats, Bears, and Wolves at Voyageurs National Park (and environs)

Great Lakes Aquarium

Our exit from Grand Marais, Minnesota** (where we had visited Isle Royale National Park) led us to Duluth, Minnesota, a charming city with some great restaurants - and a fun freshwater fish aquarium.

After exploring the aquarium and eating various smoked fish platters at the legendary Northern Waters Smokehaus, we hit the road. The drive to Voyageurs National Park was (mostly) pretty and (mostly) in the middle of nowhere - though with two significant stops.

Our first stop was the International Wolf Center in Ely, Minnesota. We enjoyed learning about wolves - and observing wolves playing and sleeping. (We took turns going into the center so Deja dog never had to stay alone).

The only thing that would make a day where you see wolves better is a day where you also see bears. Almost to Voyageurs National Park, we stopped by the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary, a black bear haven, in Orr, Minnesota. 

The sanctuary is named after Vince Shute (1913 - 2002 per Internet sources), a logger who decided not to shoot the bears that broke into the logging cabins - and, instead, leave food for them. The strategy worked - and reportedly (per the sanctuary’s website) Vince concluded, “the bears aren’t mean, just hungry!” 

Today, the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary aims to teach people about bears and promote “peaceful coexistence between humans and bears.” The sanctuary feeds bears (something Voyageurs and all national parks advise against), but the sanctuary says it’s managing a preexisting condition (i.e., the fact that Vince had fed the bears for years) - and providing the visitors with a unique opportunity to learn about wild bears.

To get to the sanctuary, you drive up a dirt road to a parking lot where a bus takes you to the bear sanctuary. In the bear sanctuary, people can walk over a suspended bridge and observatory to view the bears. 

The bears did not disappoint - bears were everywhere (much to our viewing delight) -- and the kind cashier in the parking lot took care of Deja while we visited the bears. 

After our adventures with the bears, we headed to the Voyagaire Lodge on Crane Lake. The lodge offers not just hotel rooms, but also houseboats that can be rented out for several days - or even a week - in the park. If we had more time (or if we ever go back), we will definitely rent the houseboats. They looked fun (some had water slides), luxurious, and relaxing.

Voyagaire Resort

After a dinner of walleye wild rice cakes (walleye and wild rice are pivotal staples of Minnesota cuisine), soft pretzel sticks, pizza, and fried walleye fingers at the hotel’s restaurant, we went to bed so we could make the most of our day in the national park.

Voyageurs National Park is best enjoyed on the water (most of the park is water, not land) so we rented a boat (you’ll get the hang of it pretty fast, even if you haven’t skippered a boat for a while) and spent hours exploring, eventually ending up at Kabetogama Lake Visitor Center before returning. Voyageurs National Park borders Canada so assessing whether a property was flying an American or a Canadian flag helped us make sure we were staying on the right path on the water.*

*Note, be mindful of how much gas is in your gas tank as stations are not plentiful. We had to do some scrambling to find gas around Ash River.

While we barely scraped the surface of all there is to see in Voyageurs National Park, we only had one day of exploring before returning to Minneapolis to head home.

Holiday Acres

Holiday Acres

**The most efficient way to do this trip would to go straight from Grand Marais to Duluth to Voyageurs. Because we had a wedding to attend, however, we detoured to the Holiday Acres Resort in Rhinelander, Wisconsin (very charming and worth more than one night) to attend the wedding, before circling back 
to Duluth to head up to Voyageurs.