Skip to main content

Taking Hannah to Utah--Voyageurs National Park (Superior, WI to Fargo, ND)

Image
By


Oh man.  I did so NOT feel well when I woke up the morning after our late-night Culver's dinner.  But the show must go on, right?  We had a couple of hours to head to Voyageurs National Park.  Never heard of it? Yeah, neither had I.  Turns out, it's mostly a water park where people fish in both the summer and winter, and the visitor center side of it focuses on the people who have used the water over the past couple of hundred years.  We had a canoe ranger tour scheduled where we would learn things for an hour on land and then spend 30 minutes on the water.  About an hour before our scheduled tour, Hannah got a phone call (unbelievable in and of itself because we basically hadn't had any service for the past two days).  The tour was cancelled because of the rain and the water conditions on the lake.  Hannah was so disappointed.  We headed to the visitor center anyway.

Bless the hearts of those rangers because they had set up the configuration of the canoe with chairs in the front of the room, and after the presentation had started, the ranger asked for a volunteer.  Hannah had no problem at all raising her hand.  She then proceeded to don all of the accoutrements that a voyageur of French Canada would have worn, bringing his pelts from central Canada down to the St. Lawrence waterway for purchase. 




 

Yep, the entire park is based on those men who facilitated the fur trade (specifically beaver fur).  It felt a bit like an oxymoron to base a park on what the park system stands against now, but they frame it as celebrating history.  (I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually either dismantle the park, or rename it.)  It was incredible to hear what the voyageurs endured to get the pelts down the water ways, but it was a bit sickening to think of how the men decimated the population of so many animals.  Currently, the population of beavers is 15 million (they have made a comeback) whereas there were 30 million 200 years ago.  Crazy.

Hannah donned her tuque and her sash and bands around her calves to keep the leeches out of her pants ;-) The voyageurs sang to keep the rhythm of rowing, so we did as well.  We learned about their birch bark boats too which were light but not always water-tight.  And during the presentation, we could hear the wind and rain pummeling the visitor center....which made me very thankful to be pretend voyageurs inside.

We really did get as much as we could out of the presentation and then headed down to another visitor center (the park has three) so that Hannah could complete her junior ranger packet.  While there, we
discovered that an older ranger was a SCUBA diver so it was fun to swap some stories with him.  She took her junior ranger pledge.

After that, we drove to Fargo, North Dakota, a new state for both of us! We could hardly believe the difference once we hit the state line.  It was like we returned to civilization.  We decided on Chipotle for dinner, but made a pit stop at a cupcake store...because what is a Mommy/Hannah trip without cupcakes in tow?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Like Dominos....

By
It all began with glare.  Simple, obnoxious, I-can't-stand-it-anymore glare. Our 60" rear projection TV in the family room was basically unviewable except after 10 o'clock at night.  The glare from the windows was making it impossible to see anything during my 10 minute lunch break each day, and something had to change. Too, the TV didn't fit in the entertainment center from Germany.  John, wanting bigger and better, hadn't considered that the space is only 40" wide.  For the past five years, I have been nagged by 6" of overhang on both sides of the TV stand. I went to Lowe's to price blinds.  $1,043 for five blinds, and that was at 20% off. I figured a new TV would be cheaper than that.  I was right, even with the state-of-the-art receiver and new HDMI cables that sly salesman told us we needed to have. But where to put the old TV?  It just needed a quiet, dark place to retire. Glo's bedroom.  Her TV was a relic from the paleoneoneand...
3 comments
Read more

The Quest for Birkenstocks

By
One of the main reasons I go to Germany every couple of years is to restock my supply of Birkenstocks.  I started buying them when I lived there, and I basically can't live without them now.  It just about kills me when a pair runs its course and needs to be thrown away.  I think in my lifetime, I've thrown away only three pairs.  One that never was quite right (the straps were plastic and would cut into my skin after a long day), one pair that I wore gardening one too many times (the brown dirt stains wouldn't come out of the white leather), and the pair that I was wearing when I broke my ankle (they were an unfortunate casualty of broken ankle PTSD because those purple and blue paisleys go down as one of my favorite pairs of all time).  I only threw out the garden ones a couple of days before I left for Germany, because I knew I would be getting a new pair. The only store where I have ever bought my Birkenstocks is Hoffmann's in Speicher.  (Well okay, t...
2 comments
Read more

Thinking Beyond Ourselves

By
In our church, most adults hold a “calling”.  What this really means is they have a job, or a specific way to serve within the local congregation.  We believe that this calling is inspired from God—it’s a specific way that he wants us to serve, so that we can either learn and grow ourselves, or so that we can help someone else. I have had more callings in the church than I can count, and with few exceptions, I have loved every one of them.  I have come to love people (adults, teens and kids) who I might never have met.  I have learned much--from how to organize a Christmas music program, to how to make a Sunday School lesson meaningful to apathetic teenagers.  I have served as president of the children’s organization, and I have been the leader of 30 young, single adults. With every calling comes a lot of work.  Of course, the amount of work one puts into a calling is up to an individual.  I choose to put everything into a calling.  I give up ho...
3 comments
Read more