Bemidji MN Part 1

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It was an easy 45 mile drive from Itasca State Park to Lake Bemidji State Park. Since check out and check in times are late in the afternoon, we didn’t have much time to explore yet that day after getting setup in our site. The campground is situated on the northern end of Lake Bemidji. The lake itself is actually part of the Mississippi River and the city is the first major town on the river. It will be nice to be in a populated area again after spending 9 nights in the rather remote location of Lake Itasca. Even better, our site here is much more level so it didn’t require any leveling blocks. Both of the campgrounds only have electric on site and we are downgraded from 50 amp to 30 amp but we will get by just fine.

In the previous post, I mentioned about the Paul Bunyan Trail. This rail trail starts in Bemidji and runs for 115 miles to the south and actually starts just a few miles from camp. There doesn’t appear to be a trail from the campground to the trail or if there is, it was decimated by a wind storm about one month ago and the park is still attempting to clean up many of its trails. We simply drive a few miles to the nearest trailhead parking area about one mile from the beginning of the trail. It turns out the trail continues another 96 miles to the north but is named the Blue Ox Trail. While both of these trails would be ideal for biking, we decide to simply walk the trail. The only reason for this is the fact that there are a series of 50 geocaches hidden along the first six miles of trail. The distance between caches is just about a tenth of a mile and we have found that bikes only get in the way when stopping that frequently.

Paul Bunyan and Babe in Downtown Bemidji

Chris and I spend our first full day walking a total of 5.5 miles looking for caches. There was a lot of tree damage along the sides of the trail but the trail itself was completely clear. It did make it a challenge to find something of the hides if it was in a heavily damaged area. One of the containers was only found by digging under one of the newly blown over trees. The small plastic container was completely mushed but we found it and signed the log. In this type of scenario, we prefer to look for every other cache while walking in one direction and then look for the remaining ones on the walk back to the car. That way we have caches to look for in both directions. We ended up finding 23 of 24 caches we looked for on that first day.

Paul Bunyan Trail

Crushed Geocache

On the second day, Chris wasn’t really enjoying the hides but I was determined to not give up. She drove me over to where we had concluded on day one and I continued to walk south towards downtown Bemidji. My success rate wasn’t as good as with Chris. I only found 13 of the 17 I looked for. I did cross over the Mississippi River a couple times - first as it flows out of the lake and a gain as it flows into the lake from the south.

Mississippi River Exits Lake Bemidji

River Enters Lake Bemidji

By doing the walk solo, I was able to have Chris come pick me up in downtown and we got the opportunity to check out some of the displays in Paul Bunyan Park including the huge statues of Paul and his Blue Ox Babe. The visitor center had a lot of interesting displays about the folklore of Paul as well as other visitor information for the area.

Unusual Bench Design

Sculpture in Paul Bunyan Park

Chris Has Big Friends

Normally we prefer to limit our travels from any given campground to less than 60 miles or so. We figure if there is enough worth seeing in an area, we should ideally move our home closer and spend some time to properly explore. But as I panned around the map of Minnesota north of Bemidji, I only saw a couple of things that piqued my interest. Voyageurs National Park jumped out just because it’s a national park we haven’t visited yet and Bemidji is likely the closest stop we will ever be to the park. International Falls sounded interesting simply because this town is often shown on the national weather maps as being the coldest spot in the lower 48 during the winter months. Neither reason was really good enough to make the 120 mile drive northeast from camp worth it, but somehow I convinced Chris it would be fun. We get an early start the next morning and head out. We limited our stops on the drive up so we could maximize our time up there, but we did stop at a rest area in the town of Blackduck just because the statue looked interesting as we drove by. As we proceeded on US-71, we saw lots of logging trucks. The full ones were heading in our direction and the empty ones heading the opposite way.

Blackduck MN Mascot

Voyageurs National Park is a very big park - over 200,000 acres. There are several visitors centers that can be reached by car but the park is predominantly accessible by watercraft. Since we don’t have a canoe, kayak or other boat and we have not planned ahead to reserve a boat tour, we will be limited in what we can see or do. The Rainy Lake Visitor Center is the closest one to International Falls and will serve its purpose to allow us to stamp our national park passport and look around a little bit. Without heading out on a boat tour to one of the many islands for additional hiking or tent camping, we really are going to barely scratch the surface of the park.

Another National Park in Our Book

Rainy Lake Visitors Center

We arrive before 10 AM, head into the visitor center and talk to the ranger at the desk. He confirms that the boat tour that is taking place today is already full. We are offered to listen in to the talk of one of the tour groups that is heading out to a replica boat like the fur traders of the 1700’s used to transport furs. There are lots of displays and informational signs to help explain about the previous inhabitants and their lifestyle.

Finally Found a Moose!

Fur Traders

Howling Wolf

Great Grey Owl

We spend a little bit of time exploring the dock outside the visitor center. We can see the birch bark canoe that the group will be heading out in shortly after they get their safety speech.

Main Dock at Visitor Center

Park Service Boat

Birch Bark Canoe

As we head over to the park’s boat ramp and docks, we pick up the Oberholtzer Trail. It’s an easy 1.6 mile trail through the woods with nice water views along the way. It’s not much of a hike but feels good after the 2 hour drive to get here. Voyageurs won’t go down as one of our favorite national parks but by not being water people, we didn’t give it much of an opportunity to wow us.

National Park Boat Launch and Docks

On the way out of the national park heading towards International Falls, we stopped for a few geocaches along the way. The stop at Tilson Creek Bogwalk was pretty. After finding the geocache, we headed out onto the long boardwalk over the bog. It leads into a wooded area with a fair number of trails. Like many of the trails we are finding in northern Minnesota, these are used mainly for cross country skiing or snowshoeing and don’t look real inviting for hiking. Plus we have other places we want to see today.

Trailhead at Tilson Creek Bogwalk

Long Boardwalk Over Bog

It was lunchtime now so we stopped in the town of Ranier for food and drink. The Cantilever Distillery had  good food and beer. Afterwards we walked around the cute little town and found another geocache and used an Adventure Lab to tour us through the area. The statue of Big Vic as you enter town has an interesting backstory. The 25 tall fiberglass statue of a voyageur was created in 1980 in protest of the US government using eminent domain to seize property for the creation of the national park.

Lunch Spot in Ranier

Rainy Lake Light

Beach in Ranier

Big Vic

It’s a short drive from Ranier to International Falls. It was now clear where all those log trucks were heading. There is some sort of huge wood or paper processing plant right near the international bridge into Canada on the north edge of town. We didn’t have any real plans on what we want to see, but we stopped near the big Smokey the Bear statue and walked around town.

Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires

Right next to the bear statue is the Koochiching County Historical Museum. We didn’t go in to check it out but I was tempted when I saw it was also the Bronko Nagurski Museum as well. I remember his name as a football player from my childhood but based on the years he played, I only knew the name from my dad talking about him. I suspect I only remember him because of his cool name.

Bronko Nagurski

We walked around downtown and discovered a bunch of murals that seemed to be more artistic than many we see.

Mural Looks Realistic

Elks Lodge Mural

We also had a geocache to find hidden in the library. It had a bunch of favorite points and happened to be open - lots of these more rural libraries have limited hours and days they are open. As we finished up in town, we found some more murals that were even more unusual. At first glance, they looked to be just murals but upon closer inspection, they actually had three dimensional aspects to them. One just worked in an existing electrical box on the side of the wall to become the head of one of the figures. While another mural had some sort of plaster or concrete placed on the brick wall to give a very subtle 3D effect, only seen if you get up close.

Outlet Head

3D Aspect of Mural

It was approaching 4 PM and we still had a 2 hour drive back to Bemidji. We had originally planned to work in several more stops on the drive but limited it to just one in the town of Northome. We had a geocache to find placed near a large bear statue in the center of town. As we pulled up to park along the street nearby, I noticed something rather cute. A building along the street had its window open with a sign taped in the upper half that read “Warning Protected by Pug Security” with the name Bill hand written below. Sure enough, Bill was looking through the screen keeping a close eye on us. We must not have entered his security perimeter since he did not bark.

Security By Bill the Pug

Bear in Northome

I wouldn’t say the drive to Voyageurs or International Falls was a “must do” but it was an interesting but long day.