Voyageurs National Park – Minnesota
I have explored many National Parks on solo driving tours. There is something about the quiet rhythm of the road with long stretches of highway and time to think. Driving to Voyageurs in northern Minnesota was one of those journeys.
I followed the North Shore of Lake Superior for part of the trip, marveling at its vastness. Lake Superior feels more like an inland sea than a lake, immense, powerful and stretching beyond sight. The drive itself felt expansive.
As I turned inland and approached the Kabetogama Lake Visitor Center at Voyageurs, my phone announced that I had crossed into Canada. I had not but had this technological notification tell me something that is true about this place. Voyageurs sit directly along the Canadian border. Water, islands and channels weave between the United States and Ontario.
Voyageurs National Park was established in 1975 when President Gerald Ford signed it into law. Voyageurs was part of a later preservation effort, protecting nearly 220.000 acres of interconnected waterways.
The park is named after the French-Canadian voyageurs, paddlers who traveled these waters in the 18th and early 19th centuries transporting furs and trade goods. Their routes connected Lake Superior to the interior of the continent. The waterways that we navigate today follow many of the same paths.
Voyageurs is a place where boundaries blur between land and water, between nations, between past and present. It carries the spirit of travel and movement.
Read More From Nancy
Grand Teton National Park – Wyoming
We chose to stay in the lodge within the Grand Teton National Park to be present for the light throughout the day. In the Tetons, the light brushes the snow-capped peaks with soft pinks and golds in the morning with blue and silvers in the evening. There is no way I could choose which national park […]
Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area – Georgia
Hewett Lodge sits among the trees in the Chattahoochee River corridor. This building is nestled into the forest, overlooking the river that has shaped this region for centuries. Inside the lodge, there are exhibits that speak of the historic and current importance of this river. By the 1970s, rapid development around Atlanta threatened to overtake the Chattahoochee […]
Korean War Veteran’s Memorial – Washington DC
In Washington, D.C., the nation’s story unfolds across sweeping lawn and reflecting pools, carved into marble, bronze and stone. Each memorial is scattered through the city’s landscape translated into physical form by artists tasked with shaping our memory. Among the most moving memorials is the Korean War Veterans Memorial. This memorial does not soar skyward but meets […]
