Welcome back for episode 4 my friends! This week we’re leaving the hot Great Plains and headed North East into Minnesota for time in Voyageurs National Park and Apostle Islands National Lake Shore.

There was a lot of ground to cover to get us from South Dakota to Minnesota. On our eleven hour drive the passing of time was marked by endless corn fields, intense storms, and a lot of lovely food. Most notably, in Fargo North Dakota we stopped for a delicious casual farm to table meal at a place called Luna. The name caught our eye, but the food is what got us through the door! All locally sourced veggies, home made pickles, and a beat salad that I’m still thinking about 8 months later.

We also found another notable international market called FM International Foods. If you go through that area and are in need of some international food in your life, I couldn’t recommend it more!

Voyageurs National Park

It was a relief to arrive in International Falls, MN and at Voyageurs National Park particularly to cooler temps than anything we’d seen in months! We left 100+ degrees in South Dakota and arrived to the mid-70’s on the water. After realizing that Voyageurs was a stop we wanted to make on this grand little journey, we decided to see it in the traditional way by canoe.

We rented a canoe from a Rainy Lake Aquatics for the three days and two nights we set aside to explore the park. At the time of our trip (summer 2022) we paid $75 a day for our rental. It was incredibly easy as we arranged a time to meet at the boat launch and they came by and dropped the boat at the boat launch. We packed it up, and got on our way!

Being that we’re used to backpacking, we’re used to carrying all of our worldly possessions on our backs. As soon as it dawned on us that we wouldn’t be carrying our gear we qucikly got out of hand packing. Truly it felt so luxurious to carry a bottle of wine and two Pelican cases (one for our digital camera equipment and one for our film photo equipment) on the boat!

Something that I didn’t address in the video, but took us by surprise is just how much motor boat traffic there was on the water. I think we just assumed that the waterway was a hot spot for paddlers, such as ourselves. However, I think we got the wrong read on the place while doing our research. Turns out Voyageurs is a motor boaters paradise because of the good fishing.

If a boat trip like this is of interest to you, be sure to book a camp spot ahead of time as they’re required in the park. We booked ours just a few weeks ahead of time and were able to get a lovely camp spot on an island all by itself! The camp spot came with two tent pads, four bear boxes, and a little pit toilet made to look like a tree stump! Here is the site where you can reserve camp spots in Voyageurs National Park for your reference:

In addition to camping on little islands, renting houseboats seemed to be another popular way to see the park. They came complete with waterslides and everything. Not going to lie, when the first one passed us out on the water, for a brief moment, we questioned our decision to see the park the “traditional way”.

Owen did an incredible job picking a camp spot for us. We had the place to ourselves and were on a lovely little peninsula that gave us a great vantage point out onto the lake. We seemingly spent most of our time lounging out on the rocks during our two days at camp.

Our time in Voyageurs was very laid back, and everything we needed. As I mentioned we had a set schedule that we were on during this trip. The pace was much faster than what we’d otherwise set for ourselves and it had us worn out by this point. Even though paddling out six miles to a camp spot isn’t everyone’s idea of a “relaxing” trip, however it was for us. It gave us some much needed time to sit still, sleep in, and take our time doing as we please. None of which we’d had the opportunity to do over the month and a half it had taken us to get here.

When I think back on our time in Voyageurs, I will always have a smile on my face and sigh in contentment.

Apostle Islands National Lake Shore

I will come out and say it, we didn’t get enough time in Apostle Islands National Lake Shore. The town of Bayfield, Wisconsin alone is worth revisiting.

Being that we only had a day in the area, our only way to see legendary Skull Island was by guided boat tour. We arrived early for our tour and decided to find some breakfast in the charming town over looking Lake Superior. Turns out, cool coffee shops and bakeries were nearly on every corner. We enjoyed strolling down the quiet residential streets lined with historic homes. Periodically I would lean towards Owen and jokingly say “So we’re buying a house here right?!”

We pulled ourselves away from our foot tour of Bayfield to hop on a catamaran that would be taking us on a tour of the Apostle Islands. These kinds of boat tours are not usually our style, as we like to suffer a little bit getting out to a view ;) however it was amazing to be able to see so much in a single day.

Skull Island, which is the island in all of these pictures, has been sculpted by vicious waves and grating lake ice over centuries. The result is this wild shoreline with suspicious formations in the form of skulls and other curious shapes! I loved hearing everyone on the boat oooh and ahhh after each new feature was introduced. It gave me a good chuckle!

Thank you all so much for being here yet again! We hope you enjoyed and will be back next week for Episode 5! Wow only two more to go!

Love, MAK

Thank you to our sponsors

These brands made it possible for us to document our travels through the Northern Midwest and turn it into this series! Without their support none of this would be possible! We’re forever grateful to have brands we already use and love on our side to help us create something we’re proud of!

Presenting Sponsors

We’ve trusted our Jetboil cooking systems for years. Our favorite, the Flash Cooking system is lightweight, compact and perfect for any trip! If we are cooking on trail, or making coffee with a view… it’s with a Jetboil.

Maps are your best friend when you’re on the road. On X makes it easy to find open routes and trails no matter where we are. On X allows us to access saved maps offline so we can locate ourselves in the wild when there’s no service.

We’ve now been living out of our flat-bed Four Wheel Camper for 3 years. FWC builds comfortable and durable campers that can fit on any truck. We can confidently say that our FWC is the most comfortable and livable rig we’ve had in all our years on the road!

Tires can be some of the best insurance when you are out in remote places. We love and trust our Toyo ATIII’s to get us in and out safely, no matter the terrain. They’re amazing in mud, moon dust, loose rocks, slick rock, you name it!

Power and power management are key to living and working full time from the road. Our mobile lives run on a Redarc Manager 30. It’s a state-of-the-art battery management system that charges and maintains auxiliary batteries by incorporating AC, DC and solar inputs. We’re not sure where we’d be without it!

Supporting Sponsors

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Our photo and video gear lives a tough life out on the road. Pelican protects everything from our microphones to our film cameras! They are tough and take the fear out of bringing the equipment we need with us!

Sawyer has been our go-to water filtration system for as long as we’ve been hiking. We love them for their Clean Water For All program that brings clean water to those without all over the world!