By:
Submission
Awesome hiking trails. Used Northern Water Excursions as a hiking guide and Jason was amazing! We traveled across Rainy Lake roughly 2 hours and hiked roughly a 2 mile loop with amazing scenery. Trail was of moderate difficulty but the trail is well maintained and there wasn't anything extravagant.
We visited when the visitor center was closed, but the park was open. We had the place to ourselves and it was incredible! The trails were easy to find with the NPS app and we saw so much beautiful scenery. We came back at night to see the stars and were truly mesmerized.
As national park junkies, we definitely wanted to visit this place. However, we couldn't find anyone in the Twin Cities who had been there although it's only 4.5-5 hours. It was clear that most of the park is only accessible by water. Truthfully, we probably would have been better off doing a houseboat or canoe trip. However, we went over MEA break, right when things were starting to shut down. It was still beautiful colors and we could do enough! We stayed at Thunderbird Lodge on Rainy Lake and did a boat tour from Voyageurs Outfitters (highly recommend). We got some hikes in (5 or so) but it was hard to find hiking trails that were accessible by land. The views were beautiful and it is a unique place. It was a bummer that almost all visitor centers were closed...I wanted my national park stickers! Luckily, they left out a stamp at the Ash River Center so I was able to get that at least!
