Day 3.6: Marquette, MI to Fort Frances, ON

We woke up to head on an ambitious drive, with no particular stops planned along the way other than to reach our destination. The temperature was in the 40s but at least the weather was clearer, though we didn’t encounter any particular stunning views along the rest of our drive through the Upper Peninsula. We stopped at a gas station on the side of the road a few hours into the drive to use the bathroom and were able to use the microwave to heat up our Italian leftovers from the night before, which we ate in the car while parked.

We kept driving, eventually crossing into Wisconsin. Abe was sort of craving a root beer float, and, lo and behold, we came across an A&W! Abe thought it might be simpler to order from the counter instead of doing the drive-thru, but it turned out that the cashier had to come outside the booth to input the order on a screen, which hardly seemed all that productive. He enjoyed his root beer freeze as we kept driving, passing some very unappealing red water along the road.

We crossed over a bridge and entered Minnesota, where the water was much nicer and the surrounding trees were quite beautiful.

We continued driving, seemingly endlessly, until we started seeing signs for Voyageurs National Park, which is why we were headed this far north. We made it to International Falls, which has no waterfalls but is located along the Canadian border. The motel we had found and reserved was on the Canadian side, so we casually drove through the small town to the bridge that required a $7 toll to leave the country. When we handed over our passports to cross into Canada, we were told to pull over, and waited about fifteen minutes while background checks were run on us.

We drove about five minutes in Fort Frances, Ontario, until we reached the Bayview Motel. After a friendly interaction with the owner, we were pleased to see that our room matched the newer, remodeled pictures we had seen on Hotels.com and indeed offered the promised lake view. We decided to walk along the lake for about twenty minutes to get to the restaurant, though we were put off a bit by the smell of the water even as we enjoyed looking at it and being able to see the United States on the other side.

We arrived at the top-rated restaurant in this small town, Flint House. Abe opted for the 16oz prime rib, with vegetables and French fries on the side, while Arielle got the walleye with vegetables and mashed potatoes. When he asked to have the peppers left off, Abe was impressed that the waitress came back out to make sure it was okay that the prime rib seasoning had some peppers in it. Though the seasoning was not the best part, the prime rib was good, but Arielle thought that each part of her meal could have been just a bit better. The meal wasn’t cheap, but we appreciated seeing the total converted back into American dollars.

We decided to walk back along the main street rather than the water, stopping in at a Safeway to look for some fruit. We were excited to discover some Canadian greek yogurt and opted to each buy a four-pack of an appealing flavor. Abe got banana chocolate and Arielle got lemon meringue.

We walked back the fifteen or so minutes to the motel. We settled in for the night, got some work done, and went to bed.

Approximate number of miles covered: 419