We visited Voyageurs National Park the wrong way last weekend.

The park, right at the northern border of Minnesota, is more than one-third lake, and nearly all of the land is best accessed by boat — or by ice, once the lake gets there. We didn’t have a boat and had just a few hours, hardly enough to get introduced to a few hundred square miles. But it was my birthday week, and the fall colors were still hanging on, and we won’t be in Minnesota forever, and we had a beautiful Saturday to spend, so we went for it. It’s the wrong approach to truly see this place. But it was beautiful nonetheless.

We hiked the Blind Ash Bay Trail, a nice little loop near a park entrance. Golden aspen and birch leaves, long pine needles and green mosses carpeted the often waterlogged forest floor. There’s still growing to do even in October, including for spiky little plants, like miniature Christmas trees and cacti, that I’d never seen before.

Hopefully we’ll have the chance to get more thoroughly acquainted.

Thanks for looking!