Voyageurs National Park

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.