Day 8 September 3, Fargo, ND to International Falls MN

We almost did the most Minnesotan thing today - hit a deer! We were bouncing around between 3 different visitor centers at Voyagers National Park. As we were leaving visitor center #2 on our way to #3 a deer popped out of a ditch and ran in front of the car for a little while. I let out a yell, hit the brakes and the deer darted off to the left and off the highway. I missed it by about a foot – and it was a big deer, it would have caused some damage for sure. We feel very lucky!

Our coffee today ended up being at a Starbucks inside a target store in Fargo. With our coffee, we headed North and East, an endless number of lefts and rights in a stairstep fashion as we worked our way from Fargo to International Falls. Even though the park is remote, we learned you can’t just walk up and hope to join a boat tour. With it being the Labor Day weekend, all tours are sold out, at least the ones run by the National Park Service. The advice is that you need to travel by boat if you want to see this park, so we were able to book one for tomorrow. Today, after visiting all the visitor centers, we managed to get in a 2-mile hike to a spot overlooking the lake. It is very remote up here and it’s a reminder that I am very close to where I drove last year as I did my trip across Canada. We can see Canada from downtown International Falls.

At our hotel tonight, a large motorcycle gang checked in just after us – I told Michele that I wasn’t too worried about them being rowdy, as they were all driving 3-wheel motorcycles and one of them had a walker.