Brady and I have been wanting to do a trip like this for a long time and what better time to do it than for our 5 year wedding anniversary! At first we wanted to visit the boundary waters but then when I figured out about Voyageurs national park in Minnesota it reminded me so much of the boundary waters and they are so close to each other! I thought it would maybe be a little more safe as we don’t know our way around the boundary waters and I know they can be tough to navigate. Voyageurs national Park is located in northern Minnesota where we would get to kayak and camp on a lake where travel is all by water. So we hauled all our gear in on our kayaks!

We had originally planned our itinerary and campsites on Rainy Lake, but due to flooding we had to set a new itinerary on Crane Lake because that side of the park was not flooded. We stayed at three different campsites and had to kayak and haul all our stuff to each one and every site was better than the last!

Our first campsite King Williams Narrows was relatively close to the boat dock, but due to high winds and acclimate weather it made getting into our campsite very difficult. Every time you would kayak forward, the wind would essentially push you back taking away any ground you covered. The wind was coming head-on in the direction we were going and occasionally to the side with big white caps coming over and into our kayaks soaking us and our gear. It was a struggle getting in and naturally right when we got closer to our campsite in a cove that was calmer, I decided I had to go to the bathroom. I tried going outside my kayak and completely fell in the water in all my clothes. Icing on the cake. So then we spent our first night at the campground just trying to warm up next to the fire haha! The next day Brady went fishing off the dock and we saw some of the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen in my life (imagine tarantula sized) and they haunted me the rest of the trip haha!

The next day we kayaked through the narrows right alongside the Canadian border to our next campsite on Mukooda lake. The cool thing about Mukooda Lake is that it’s completely enclosed so boats cannot get back there so it’s very calm and peaceful. Our campsite was right along the water making for some beautiful views. I lounged and read in my hammock while Brady fished. 

It was also Brady‘s birthday while we were there so he spent the day fishing and then we kayaked to our final campground. Ingersoll Cove is tucked away and is basically a giant island that we had all to ourselves. This was our first campground where we were the only ones there. We caught an amazing sunset and spent the night reading by the fire. 

We had to get up bright and early the next day because we had a lot of ground to cover on our way back out. Since each day, we kayaked to a different campsite deeper into the park away from the boat dock, we had all that ground to cover on our morning kayak back out. In total we kayaked around 15 miles and we counted over 75 mosquito bites on my body haha! 

This trip was everything we dreamed of and more! I would highly recommend this area as it’s such a unique park being entirely on the water!