Kahlen seemed excited about all three places. The drive was going to be about two hours both ways. It was about 98 miles away, but it was a long winding 98 mile long road away. That's why it took two hours.
Kahlen sat in back playing games and watching movies, on a long winding road. Do you see where I'm going with this. About 3/4 of the way there I looked back at her and she was laying against the arm rest crying. She was carsick. Her head hurt, her stomach hurt, I felt awful for her. We found a little pullover. We got her out of the car, gave her some Tylenol and an applesauce out of the cooler. She walked around a bit and started to feel better. As it turns out, this little pullover, it may have been there as part of an actual plan. Carsickness and this road must be a well known phenomenon. As we were letting Kahlen get her land legs back an older couple drove in and stopped at the pullover. They stopped and the man got out and started walking around in the fresh air. The lady looked over at Kahlen and said, "that road is awful, isn't it!" Not as bad as the Needles Highway in South Dakota, but very nausea inducing none the less.
After Kahlen started to feel better we took off again and told her to let us know if she needed to stop again. She didn't, and soon we were at the Wolf center. We got there just in time to see a presentation about how they are trying to repopulate and balance the moose and wolf populations in the National Park on Isle Royal in Lake Superior. Some of the challenges being the wolves and moose themselves. When an animal is relocated into the park they are tagged and monitored. When the lake freezes, those tagged and monitored animals may decide to leave the island in favor of returning to the mainland. If an animal decides to do this, they don't try to find them and return them again, they let the animals decide their own migration patterns. Some stay forever and some prefer to roam. They are allowed to do as nature prods them.
The wolves were out and roaming about in their habitat. They call them their ambassador wolves. There are four ambassador wolves. They seem to be able to live as they would in the wild, as much as they can in a confined area. While they have daily contact with caretakers, they are well protected from the visitors and not domesticated. They honestly seemed to not be at all impressed with the crowd of people on the other side of the glass enthralled with their every move.
Kahlen sat and watched and took pictures of the wolves. I think she could have sat there all day.
As beautiful and intriguing as the wolves were we finally had to leave them behind to get to our other destinations of the day. Kahlen seemed sad to leave them, but was excited for root beer at our next stop. But first we needed to stop for some lunch. For some strange reason, knowing we would be going to the Root Beer Lady museum, I ordered a root beer at Dairy Queen. Yeah, I don't know why. I rarely drink pop anymore. I haven't for years. Dairy Queen for whatever reason, didn't have ice tea, I didn't want water, so I stood and stared at this strange pop dispenser. I know they've been around for a while but I've never used one. You've probably seen and used them. You pick your pop and then can add a flavored syrup to it. Well, if I was going to drink pop I was going to do it right! I got root beer with cherry syrup. It was good, but not as good as I had hoped, which of course set the root beer lady's root beer up for unreasonable expectations on my part. Would it stand up? That question would soon be answered.
The museum was a short distance from the wolf center. The root beer lady's real name was Dorothy Molter. She had gone to a resort on the Knife River as a summer job as a young woman. She fell in love with the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness area and returned to work there permanently, and eventually came to own the resort. At some point, the government decided to make the BWCAW a national park. Dorothy did not want to give up her land and resort. As a compromise, she offered to leave the land to the park after her death as long as she could stay there until then. With the new park came new rules, and all of her supplies needed to portaged into the resort, by canoe. With the new rules came decisions. Previously, she had provided pop to her guests. Portaging meant that pop, which at that time was bottled in heavy glass bottles, was just not seen as a necessity. Portaging by canoe means at times the canoe carrying the supplies had to be picked up and carried across land for up to several miles until it can be put back into water for the next leg of the journey. She just couldn't bring herself to make workers portage pop. As a child I had to carry my mom's eight packs of Dr. Pepper, those suckers were heavy!
Eventually, Ms. Molter was looking at the collection of old pop bottles she had stored up over the years. That was when the idea of making and bottling her own root beer for her customers came about. She made her root beer from the water in the Knife River, bottled it in all of those old bottles and sold and shared it with her guests and canoers. What started out as a simple replacement for pop that had to be portaged, turned into a business. The people making it now don't use water from the river, but say they try to stay as close to Ms. Molter's recipe as possible.
We walked around the area. Her personal cabin had been moved from the river to the town of Ely upon her death. You could walk around her cabin and read many facts and antidotes about her. It was interesting but we went through it a little quicker than I might have liked, because, you know, we had a nine year old with us. After we had toured through the area we went to the gift shop and got a six pack of the iconic root beer. It was good, very good. After we left I looked up their website to see if they sell it online, and they do. Same price as at the museum, however, shipping and handling fees, we won't be ordering it online.
Finally, it was time to go to the North American Bear Center. I think they and the wolf center are linked, we saved a dollar on our admission to the bear center with our wolf bands. I kind of expected the same type of displaying of the bears as at the wolf center. However, it was different. At the bear center they had a behind the scenes tour where you could see the bears a little more up close. Well, at least one. They have four bears at the center. One in particular, Ted, was given to them from a family in Wisconsin who had kept him as a pet. This is legal in Wisconsin, but for whatever reason the family decided he would be better off with the center. Being a former pet, Ted is friendly and very happy to come and get treats from the caretakers. The bears know the pouches that the caretakers have for their treats. People are advised to stay behind a line out of reach of the bears, mostly because they are pick pockets looking for treats if you get too close.
The bears seem very content in their habitat at the center. The intern giving the tour told us at one point there was a strong storm that had actually destroyed a small portion of the fencing. The bears were found just outside the fencing, but they hadn't wandered off. They happily returned to their home when their caretakers came to check on them as soon as they could get there.
Back inside, they had a program about other animals indigenous to the area. Including snakes and turtles, both of which they had some that lived at the center. Not all of the interns are crazy about the snakes, and as a joke, the newest snake was named after one of those interns. The woman who did the program let the kids touch the snakes and let the turtle down to check out the kids. She was very good at keeping the more excited children controlled to not scare the animals, while still being friendly. And there were a couple of very bouncy, excited boys for her to deal with.
As we left it started to rain pretty hard. The drive back was a little dreary and a little less pretty. Kahlen fell asleep through the worst of the winding road. When we got back to the highway we stopped at one of the pull overs along the lake and took some pictures before it started to pore on us again. We even got to see a rainbow or two.
We decided to have dinner at a little cafe down the highway from the state park. It was good and filling and we didn't have to try to cook in the rain. They also had a breakfast menu, so we decided to stop there on the way to go kayaking the next morning.
When we got back to the campsite it was muddy and buggy. Rain was still drizzling so we decided to play Yatzee in the tent.
Kahlen got the only Yatzee, and basically kicked our butts.
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