Let me set the scene for you: three adventurous girls decided that the youngest one should get her passport and get out of the country. I was the youngest one, which meant that an expedited passport was soon in the mail!
We left home Sunday evening and like any good road trip, our first stop was for ice cream, and we just happened to be going through Le Mars, Iowa, the Ice Cream Capital of the World. It was so, so good and I 10/10 recommend it to a friend!
After ice cream, we hopped back on the road and drove through the night. Let me just tell you that summer construction in the midwest is a real thing, especially when driving through the middle of Minneapolis at 2 in the morning. Luckily, not many people are on the road that early on a Monday morning!
Shortly after that whole anxiety-filled fiasco, Bekah took over driving. She drove until about 6 when the sun started coming up.
We pulled over in a church parking lot to take a little nap. The nap was short-lived because I had to go to the bathroom, and I still haven’t lived that one down yet. Once we started driving for the day, we were already in Northern Minnesota and surrounded by miles and miles of forests. It was so incredibly beautiful!
Our first stop for the day was going to be at Voyageurs National Park. We stopped at the visitor center and went for a little walk on a trail.
Bekah pointed out every single plant to Betta and me, and we just nodded along and pretended we were interested. We found a little pier with a bench to take some pictures on. We thought it would be fun to go on a boat tour or rent some paddle boats, but we were way too late in planning our trip to get any of that accomplished. So, back on the road we went.
The next stop was International Falls where we stopped at a couple of little stores, and then it was onto Canada! Border patrol wasn’t too bad, but in case you were wondering, you can’t take pepper spray into Canada.
After we got past border patrol, we had some time to kill before we could check into the hotel, so we explored a few little Canadian shops. Once we checked into our room, we were surprised to find that we had a balcony view of Rainy Lake. We decided to continue our adventure of exploring Rainy Lake by driving the Trans Canadian Highway, which goes right over the lake. After we got too hungry to continue adventuring, we went back to the restaurant at the hotel.
Now, this next part I need to preface with a bit of a side note. The whole reason we wanted to go to Canada was because the legal drinking age was 18, which was my age at the time. Well, Fort Frances, where the hotel was, is located in Ontario, which happened to have a different drinking age than the rest of Canada…19. I was one month away from 19, which meant that the whole reasoning for our trip had now been busted.
We still made the most of it the next day on our way back home. Also, a piece of advice, border patrol back into the U.S. is much more difficult than going into Canada. Another piece of advice, once you get your passport in the mail, you actually have to sign it, you shouldn’t just use it because they will question you. Taking your parent’s minivan will also raise questions in the border patrolmen.
After we stopped and looked at God’s beautiful creation a few more times on the way back, we arrived at our Aunt and Uncle’s house to spend one more night before we came home. It was a crazy four-day adventure that I would take again in a heartbeat given the chance.
Happy Adventuring, Hannah