Minnesota Family Vacation- Voyageurs National Park (Part 2)

We drove after the Twins game to Voyaguers National Park. We made it around 3am, which made for the second 3am bedtime in a row. We were tired! 

The kids slept in a little at the lodge the next morning, while Michael ran to the grocery store to stock us up for the boat trip. The lodge was very remote. The closest grocery store is 45 minutes away! It was a very rustic lodge, but was clean and nice. We went downstairs for some breakfast while we waited for the boat to be ready. 

We explored the property a little bit. It's beautiful. 

On the boat and ready for our adventure!

We did not see another National Park sign the entire trip. This is the best we could get!

So glad we picked up cards at the lodge. We spent hours playing card games. 

We had a spot picked out for the first night, but a boat pulled up right before us, so we were out of luck for that spot. We ended up finding another sandy beach spot. We should have known it would be a tough spot when I got attacked by mosquitos the second we got on the island. The second the sun went down there were swarms and swarms of mosquitos. We couldn't sit outside at night because of them. 

But it was a pretty spot during the day. The kids had so much fun going down the slide.

We watched the sun set over Canada. Right past that island on the right is Canadian waters. 

The next morning we headed off to find a new spot close to Kettle Falls to dock for the night. Then we took the John boat to Kettle Falls. 

This is the only National Park hotel in the park and it was extremely run down. The kids all asked what in the world we would do if we stayed at this hotel. We tried to eat lunch at the restaurant but it was so crowded we couldn't get a table. 

We walked over to the bar to see the famous slanted floor. Its hard to tell in the pictures, but it is extremely lopsided. 

We explored Kettle Falls a little bit and to be honest we were very underwhelmed. Everyone at the park told us it was a must visit and it wasn't very exciting. The "falls" was actually a dam. We weren't very impressed. 

We docked our boat at Snake Island for the night. Much less mosquitos (more black flies though). It was extremely hard to dock this boat. It's hard to see in the picture, but this is a rock site. Our previous site had been a sand site. SO much easier to dock a 60 foot houseboat on sand than rock. It was very windy and we really struggled to tie it off. 

The sunset views were spectacular. We also really enjoyed cooking s'mores on the fire.