11 BEST Things to Do at Voyageurs National Park

Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota is one of the few National Parks with no roads running through it. That’s because more than a third of this park is water! To actually see it, you have to travel by boat, the same way French-Canadian fur traders did 200 years ago.

If navigating boats isn’t your thing, don’t worry. Boat tours, water taxis, and other options are available to you. We spent nearly a week on this park’s waters, plus time at the visitor centers and shoreline, and we came away thinking it’s one of the most underrated parks in the country.

It’s also one of the most confusing to plan, which is why we’ve boiled down the 11 best things to do in Voyageurs National Park. From playing pool in a historic hotel to watching the sunset from your own houseboat, here’s where we’d start.

5 Things to Know Before You Go to Voyageurs

There are a few things to know about this park beyond the fact that it’s mostly made up of water. Voyageurs takes more planning than a drive-up park, and a few of these will shape your whole trip rather than just your packing list.

• You’ll need to book a boat. Whether this is a boat tour, a boat rental, or a water taxi, pick a way that you want to get around before you go, because there’s no way into the park without it.
• There’s no entrance fee, so you can put that money towards moving through the park via tour or your own boat instead.
• There are 4 visitor centers: Rainy Lake, Kabetogama Lake, Ash River, and Crane Lake, one per gateway community and all reachable by car.
• Book tours and campsites early. Reservations open in spring and summer dates fill fast.
• Cell service is basically nonexistent. AT&T worked in a few spots; T-Mobile and Verizon gave us nothing all week.

And with that, let’s get into the top 11 things to do in Voyageurs National Park!

1. Take a Boat Tour of Rainy Lake

If you only have one day in Voyageurs National Park, or you’re not looking to navigate your own boat, a ranger-led boat tour is our #1 recommendation. Even if you are planning to navigate your own boat, like we did, we think at least one tour is well worth your time as you get to learn things you wouldn’t on your own.

The National Park Service runs various tours out of Rainy Lake, Kabetogama Lake, and Ash River Visitor Centers. A tour can run anywhere from 2.5 to 6.5 hours and cost roughly $50 to $85 per adult.

We did the 2.5-Hour Grand Tour of Rainy Lake, the most popular tour in Voyageurs, and is what we recommend if you have just one day in the park. This tour focuses on maximizing wildlife sightings on Rainy Lake while you learn about the human and natural history of the park. We saw bald eagles and loons on our tour while other tours that same week saw moose and black bears!

2. Visit the Kettle Falls Hotel

Kettle Falls is the most popular destination in the entire park, and it’s the one place we’d tell you to build a day around if you have more than a day. Ranger-Led Boat Tours can bring you here from Ash River Visitor Center as well as from Rainy Lake Visitor Center, although you can also boat here yourself if that’s in your plans. These tours give you a few hours at Kettle Falls before taking you back to shore.

The Kettle Falls Hotel sits right on the US border with Canada and is the only lodging you’ll find in the entire park! In the 1930s, it was pitched as a hay fever sanctuary, where sufferers could find relief in the pine-scented air and there was “not a sneeze on the border.” We can confirm the air up here is still that good.

Head into the historic bar which has been nicknamed the Tiltin’ Hilton for a floor so tilted it makes for a funny game of pool. If you’re hungry, the bar serves classic bar food and is open until sunset. They’re known for their famous Pink Drink, a frozen pink lemonade and vodka. While enjoying your Pink Drink, you can ask the bartender for the pool equipment and play a round.

Don’t skip walking up to Kettle Falls itself, just off to the right of the hotel. From here, you can actually look south into Canada, one of the only places in the lower 48 where the border bends enough to let you.

3. Visit Ellsworth Rock Gardens

The Ellsworth Rock Gardens is the most visited day use site in the park. Here, you can find a terraced garden of stacked stone and flowerbeds that a man named Jack Ellsworth built over decades, leaving behind no plans and no written explanation for any of it.

You can reach this day use site via your own boat, or by a Ranger-Led Boat Tour from Kabetogama. This boat tour lasts for a total of 2.5 hours and boats through Kabetogama Lake before taking you on a quarter-mile tour of these rock sculptures.

We didn’t make it here ourselves, and some people we talked to on the water said it wasn’t worth the detour. But it’s the park’s most popular day use stop, so plenty of visitors clearly disagree. If you aren’t limited on time, this could still be a worthwhile stop.

4. Visit I.W. Stevens Resort & Hoist Bay

I.W. Stevens Resort on Namakan Lake was our favorite day-use site we saw in the entire park. Stevens ran a resort here, closed it, and then lived alone on this spot for another two decades, roughly 50 years of his life in total, largely self-sufficient. The cabins are still in remarkably good shape, and walking through them in complete silence was one of the most memorable hours of our week.

Hoist Bay has a different vibe from IW Stevens. While Stevens was remote and self-sufficient, Hoist Bay is an industry-turned-resort, having been the site of a huge logging operation. This gave it a really neat atmosphere where there was an old trestle running into the water and lots of infographics about the history of the region, where we learned about how logging almost destroyed the park.

You can reach these areas by your own boat, or take the Life on the Lake tour from Ash River, which will take you to both of these areas in about 2.5 hours.

5. Sail Past the Grassy Bay Cliffs & Namakan Narrows

The Grassy Bay Cliffs are the largest vertical cliffs in Voyageurs National Park. We boated past these tall granite cliffs on Day 3 of our houseboat trip through the park and it was really neat. This same day, we also cruised through the Namakan Narrows, a windy switchback section of the river between Namakan Lake and Sandy Point Lake. At the entrance to these narrows are supposed to be Ojbiway Petroglyphs, but we weren’t able to see them very well as they were faded. They were still super fun to boat through!

6. Go Fishing in Voyageurs

Fishing is the reason a huge number of people come to Voyageurs. These waters are home to tons of species like Walleye, Northern Pike, Smallmouth Bass, and more. We fished two ways. Off the back of the houseboat at our campsites with lures, which got us a pike, a walleye, and a rock bass.

We also went fishing with Travis Carlson, a local guide, on day 5 of our houseboat trip. He picked us up from our houseboat at 1 PM and took us to various fishing spots for 4 hours. He taught us the best way to catch Walleye and we had a lot of success!

Everyone in our group caught at least two fish, and it was a really fun experience. Even though we decided to toss all our catches back in the lake, you can take them home and cook them up if you want.

7. Hike the Trails

Althought Voyageurs National Park is mostly water, there are some hiking trails scattered throughout the park. Below, we’ve listed some of the top trails, with AllTrails links where you can follow a map. All of these trails, save the last two, you can access from a visitor center, so no boat ride needed!

The easiest trail is the Oberholtzer Trail at the Rainy Lake Visitor Center. It’s named for Ernest Oberholtzer, who fought off a plan that would have dammed this whole region into one enormous flat lake. Without him, you’d be looking at open water instead of a gorgeous maze of islands. This trail was short and sweet. We recommend it if you’re in the Rainy Lake area just for the day. Otherwise, we wouldn’t consider it a must see.

The second trail we really enjoyed was the Beaver Pond Overlook. Although we didn’t see any beavers because we didn’t have binoculars, we could still see the beaver habitat, with sticks piled high. It was a super short, but sweet trail that we’d recommend if you’re in the Ash River area.

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8. Rent a Houseboat

We rented a houseboat over the course of a week with our friends and we can’t recommend it enough! You pick up the boat from an outfitter, complete an orientation, and then cruise between the park’s roughly 90 designated houseboat sites for however many days you’ve booked.

For us, this looked like six days of hot showers, a hot tub on the roof, a new shoreline every night, and we even got to bring our dog Ollie along. This easily has gone down as one of our favorite trips we’ve ever done.

The boats are slow, ours went up to only about 5.5 mph, but that turns out to be the whole point. You spend your days watching for the next buoy, grilling on the roof, fishing off the back deck, and taking the dinghy out to whatever historic site or swimming spot is nearby. Then you moor up somewhere new, and it’s yours for the night.

You don’t dock at a marina, either. You can pull right up to shore at a designated site and tie off to rings, posts, or trees, and most houseboat campsites come with a fire ring. If your first choice is taken, you can set up on undeveloped shoreline as long as you keep your distance from an existing site.

You also don’t explicitly need boating experience. Our orientation ran about an hour, and the outfitter drove the boat out of the dock and into open water before handing it over to us. Although we lived on a boat for 2.5 years and have a decent amount of boating experience, we’re confident it’s not necessary to tackle a houseboat adventure.

9. Rent a Small Boat or Water Taxi

There are a ton of local outfitters that rent canoes, kayaks, paddleboards, and even motorboats for you to take into the park. This is a great alternative to renting a houseboat if you’re hesitant about navigating a larger boat. Sometimes, outfitters will even offer a boat drop-off to take you deeper into the park, and then you can paddle around there. For a full list of outfitters, check this NPS page.

Another way to get around is by water taxi. Authorized operators can drop you at a trailhead, a campsite, or a historic site and pick you up at an agreed time. This way, you get a day on the Kabetogama Peninsula, or a night at a backcountry campsite, without having to rent a boat at all.

10. Watch the Sunrise & Sunset

We were not prepared for the sunsets in Voyageurs. With water in nearly every direction and no buildings or streetlights anywhere, the whole sky lights up and then doubles in the lake below it. One night at the Grassy Bay Cliffs we kept pinching ourselves because it didn’t seem like we were in a National Park at all.

Our site at Ebels was the best of both worlds, with clear views of sunrise and sunset, and on our last morning we pulled away from the dock at 5 AM and watched the sun come up from the deck while we cruised. If you’re on a houseboat, you don’t have to go anywhere for this, you just have to be awake for it.

11. Stargaze and Look for the Northern Lights

Voyageurs is an International Dark Sky Park (Minnesota’s only one, certified in 2020) and the park superintendent told us it holds some of the darkest skies in the Midwest. If you’re on a houseboat, you don’t have to go anywhere. We watched the sky from inside the front windows most nights!

You can see everything from constellations to meteor showers, and maybe even the aurora borealis! Sitting this far north with essentially no light pollution for miles in any direction, Voyageurs is one of your best chances to see the northern lights in the lower 48.

The park and the Voyageurs Conservancy also run night programming through the year, including weekly Park after Dark programs in summer, an annual Summer Star Party, and a Boreal Stargazing Week in winter.

Map of Voyageurs National Park

Here’s the map we put together after our first trip here. It shows all four visitor centers, a few of the main houseboat rental companies, the best hikes, popular sites, lodging recommendations, nearest airports, campgrounds, boat tour companies, and restaurant/food recs.

How to use this map: We have saved the locations from this guide on this map. You can save this map to your Google Maps by pressing the star icon. In your Google Maps, click the menu icon and then Saved Maps, where this map will appear.

How Many Days in Voyageurs National Park?

This all depends on your budget and trip goals, but you can spend anywhere from 1 to 7 days in this national park. Below, we’ve outlined what you can fit into different trip lenghts in Voyageurs:

• 1 Day: Visit Rainy Lake Visitor Center, walk the Oberholtzer Trail, and take a ranger boat tour.
• 2 Days: Add a second gateway to the above plan. Do the boat tour on day one, then a Kettle Falls day tour or a rented boat on Kabetogama on day two.
• 3-4 Days: Enough to hit multiple visitor centers, get out on the water properly, hike a few trails, and go camping.
• 5+ Days: This is the best amount of time if you’re renting a houseboat. You can really explore a solid chunk of the park at your own pace. This is what we did for six days!

Best Time to Visit Voyageurs National Park

Late August through September is our recommendation. This is when the mosquitoes finally ease off, the water is still warm, and all four visitor centers are open. June and July have the worst bugs, and July and August is the busy season, so we’d avoid these months if possible. Here’s a breakdown of each season in more detail:

• Spring (April–May): Skip April, as the lakes are still iced over (ice-out averages April 28 on Kabetogama, May 3 on Rainy) and the trails are muddy. May works for anglers thanks to the fishing opener, but only Rainy Lake Visitor Center is open until late May.
• Summer (June–August): Everything is running, but June and July have the worst bugs we’ve experienced anywhere. Late August is the sweet spot, and where we’d start considering a trip.
• Fall (September–October): Quiet water, fall color, almost no bugs, and great stargazing. Kabetogama and Ash River visitor centers close in late September. This is another great time to visit.
• Winter (November–March): A completely different park. Ice roads, snowmobiling, skiing, and ice fishing, with the best aurora odds of the year. Only Rainy Lake and Kabetogama are open, though, and temperatures can dip as low as -30°F.

Where to Stay in Voyageurs National Park

Below, we’ve outlined the different ways to stay inside of Voyageurs National Park. Camping is going to be the most affordable option, starting as low as $20/night in the low season, and renting a houseboat on the high end, starting at $500/night and going up from there.

• Camping: Besides 2 campgrounds along the Kab-Ash Trail, most campsites in Voyageurs require you to cross the water to get to them. There are a total of 157 frontcountry campgrounds along the shores of Rainy, Kabetogama, Namakan, Sand Point, and Crane lakes, which cost as low as $20/night. Reserve on Recreation.gov.
  
• Houseboat: If you decide to rent a houseboat like we did, your lodging is settled! Houseboat rentals cost between $500 and $2,000 per night, on average. Voyageurs has around 90 designated houseboat sites, all first-come, first-served. We recommend arriving by 3 PM to get your first choice each night.
  
• Kettle Falls Hotel: This historic hotel on the Canadian border is the only official lodging inside the park, reachable exclusively by boat. A double room costs around $110/night, which you can book on their website.
  
• Outside of the Park: You can also look for hotels or VRBO stays outside of the park in Voyageurs’ gateway communities. International Falls has the most variety and it’s close to Rainy Lake, but Kabetogama, Ash River, and Crane Lake are options too.

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What to Pack for Voyageurs National Park

Packing for Voyageurs is different from packing for most national parks, because instead of packing for trails, you’re packing for water. Here are some things to bring with you that you might not first think about.

• GPS – Since cell service is spotty, we like to carry our Garmin InReach Mini 2 with us for safety and peace of mind.
• Heavy-Duty Bug Repellant – The bugs in Voyageurs can be brutal, especially in the summer. Make sure to bring heavy-duty bug spray and use it. Citronella candles can help at camp or on your boat too.
• Head Bug Net – If you’re really worried about bugs while walking around, you can also pack a head bug net to keep them from biting your face, neck, and ears.
• Sunscreen – No matter the time of year, sunscreen is essential to protect your skin.
• Sun Hats – A wide-brimmed hat is going to bet your best friend in this park in the summer.
• UV Shirts – We love wearing sun shirts so that we don’t have to reapply sunscreen on our shoulders and arms all day.
• Paper Maps – Physical maps are a must if you plan on navigating by boat. Pick up some at a Visitor Center or purchase specialized ones in advance.
• Layers – As nights can get chilly here, pack plenty of layers, even in the summer.
• Swimsuit – You are surrounded by water after all! Bring a swimsuit so you can jump in.
• Games & Books – The best way to spend your time in the park if you are hit with any bad weather days.

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