This summer we spent 3 fantastic days in Voyageurs National Park exploring the most beautiful National Park in our home state of Minnesota! Voyageurs is really like the Swiss Army knives of parks in that you can explore this area in many ways including houseboat, fishing boat, canoe, kayak, snowmobile, car on an ice road, hiking, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, and more!
We chose one of the best, and to my knowledge unique to this National Park, ways to explore – by houseboat! Yes, for those who are going to ask, you can rent a houseboat in National Recreation areas such as Lake Mead or Glen Canyon/Lake Powell, but not in a fully designated National Park.
One of the biggest challenges of planning our trip to Voyageurs was figuring out how the whole thing would work when the only real way to visit this park and actually fully experiencing it means getting out on the water.
Yes, the National Park Service does run a series of tours on a tour boat, but they were not offering that when we were doing our planning and we sought a less scripted experience. Renting a boat of any type and driving it around frankly felt intimidating as there are a lot of rocks on these lakes and the liability of damage felt real.
Add to that the very few hiking trails in the park (just 15 and while some are good they are primarily at the Visitor Centers and again not out in wild areas of the park) and we settled on stretching out of our traditional comfort zone and renting a 44 foot long houseboat where we would spend the minimum rentable time (3 nights) as we also have the joy of seasickness in our family. Before we get into what we did and how it went, let’s talk logistics and cost.
All the info you need to know for houseboating in Voyageurs National Park…
Where to Rent
There are three primary locations in Voyageurs National Park where you can rent a houseboat.
First up would be the popular Rainy Lake area near International Falls, Minnesota.
There are multiple rental companies that go out here and choosing this option will limit you to just Rainy Lake, which is a huge lake with multiple bays and a host of historic sites to visit.
You can get to the historic Kettle Falls Hotel from here and will have access to the Little American Island, Harry Oveson Fish Camp, Anderson Bay and its’ overlook trail, Camp Marston, and the Cruiser Lake Trail.
The downside of this lake is its’ size, which may bring bigger waves and because the northern half of the lake is in Canada a northwest wind can be hard to find shelter from. We did not go out of this location, but would look at doing a sightseeing tour from here in the future.
The second primary location where you can rent a houseboat is at Ash River on the eastern side of Kabetogema Lake.
This is also a popular spot and the prominent Ebels Housboats rents from this location and fills their calendar for the next summer quickly and earlier than you may expect (book well before Spring Break time!).
With this central location you have easy access to the bigger section of Kabetogema to your west and the popular Ellsworth Rock Gardens but also the Namakan Lake destinations to the east. This location is easy and the shortest to navigate to the Kettle Falls Hotel from. It also has what we have heard are some beautiful hiking trails at this Visitor Center, which is the only one we have not visited.
The final location where you can rent a houseboat is off Crane Lake on the eastern side of the park.
Voyagaire Lodge and Houseboats is in this location and is where we chose to rent through.
At first we were concerned this would be out of the way or limit our ability to experience the park, but in retrospect we were glad we made this choice. Crane Lake and its’ neighboring Sand Point Lake are much smaller than Rainy, Kabetogema, or Namakan Lakes and because of that we were able to have 2 nights where there was literally no way to know you were on a houseboat as the lake became utterly still.
The advantages of Crane Lake then were its’ relatively smaller size but more so the unique experience of being able to drive through a series of “Narrows,” or channels, with rock walls on each side of us as we navigated from Crane Lake to Sand Point and ultimately Namakan Lake.
If we had more time we could have, and would have, headed into Kabetogema and to the Ellsworth Rock Gardens. Instead, in three nights we were easily able to get up to the Kettle Falls Hotel and also spend time swimming, relaxing, and cruising around in our small rented fishing boat.
What to Know – the Boat
Each rental company is different, but we will speak for our experiences with Voyagaire. Overall, we were very pleased with our rental through Voyagaire and found their staff and owners to be pleasant, supportive, patient, and accommodating. They didn’t know we would be writing this post and we didn’t reach out to them either before or after our rental or this review to get treated any differently.
We rented what Voyagaire knows as a “440 Standard,” which is a 44′ houseboat in their “Sportcruiser” line type. For our family of four it was perfect.
Amenities included a fridge/freezer, a propane stove, an oven (that we couldn’t quite figure out how to light), hot water from a propane source, a propane grill on the front deck, and a small propane heater we needed on some cold August mornings, (welcome to Northern MN!), and a spacious (!) bathroom with a flush “RV style” toilet and a tub/shower combo. It also had the all important slide and an ability to drive from the upper deck, which was nice on the open water!
Potable water came to both the kitchen and bathroom sinks. The shower, toilet, and regular kitchen and bathroom faucets all used lake water.
I will say that the 5 double beds in this and I expect any of the boats are small and not really made for 2 adults to sleep comfortably. We chose to each have our own bed which was nice.
The 5 beds included 2 couches that flop down in the open area, the table converting to a bed, a penthouse bed that is up a vertical ladder (and somewhat difficult to get to, would not recommend for older folks or those why have physical limitations), and a rear bedroom that is the most private of them all.
If you had multiple families together on this size boat, know that the only real privacy was in the bathroom or the back bedroom so make sure you like the people with you or you may play a starring role in the reprise of the Shining, Voyageurs edition when cabin fever takes over 🙂 There were curtains you could pull to section off “rooms” but that was the extent of the privacy for the 3 “bedrooms” in the main area of the boat.
One note on this model of boat that you should watch for is related to power sources. Unpublished in our research was that because our boat didn’t have an onboard generator we needed to run the outboard engine in a “charging mode” for 6-8 hours per day in addition to when we ran it to get around.
From a fuel perspective, this obviously adds up but we spent about $50/day in fuel and went pretty far as you will see so it didn’t make for a huge cost. Instead, it meant that we often had the boat running while we were eating, getting ready, and before bed as you shouldn’t run it overnight for safety reasons. The “Deluxe” model of our boat had an onboard generator that takes this issue away, as did the boats fancier than ours.
Another main consideration is getting around! If you have ever driven any kind of boat but especially a pontoon, this will be very familiar. It drives just like a big pontoon and steers just about as accurately (which is to say not very!). You have forward, reverse, and neutral and a steering wheel.
The boats are slow with ours topping out a whopping 6 knots (about 7 MPH) and you should factor on that speed when you are thinking about how far you will get in a given day. For example, it took us about 6 hours to drive from the dock on Crane Lake to the west side of Namakan Lake.
One of my biggest concerns about navigation was the expectation that all the lakes and shoreline would look similar and placing myself with precision on a map would be super hard. After returning home I’ll double down on that — I believe we would not have made it as far as we did without help. Like GPS help…
The single best tip I have for you in navigating is to download the Navionics app before you get to the dock. At the time of this writing they have a 2 week free trial and you can download specific area maps. This is a lifesaver and tells you the depth at your specific place, suggested routing, buoy locations, and a few of the house boat sites.
Ok – so you know how to drive and the secret GPS tool for getting around and now you need to pick where you are going to sleep. If you look at the Voyageurs website you will find a map of houseboat sites that are “official.”
In addition to these are a lot of “unofficial” sites that differ mainly in that they are unmarked. The unofficial sites typically have a fire ring and a means to tie up for the night. We ended up staying each of our nights in an unofficial site and found them on large maps that are provided by Voyagaire and have black dots all over on them that represent the unofficial sites.
We learned a few tips on sites and the first is to not wait too late in the day to pick a site as they get filled up and then you will be scrambling and not able to get a protected site out of the wind and waves. Many sites were filling up by around 3PM.
The second tip is to watch the wind directions (Voyagaire tells you the forecast including wind info in the Morning Show broadcast each morning) so you pick a site that will be protected from the waves. It often gets calm at night, but we had a storm that came through at 4AM and switched the wind direction to the only direction we were not protected. After that we were pushed against a shore of small pebbles and the banging was the end of sleep for Kim and I. Also note that some of the “unofficial” houseboat sites were super hard to tell where to pull in to tie up.
Some sites will have sandy areas you beach against, others small pebbles, and some can be a bit “muckier.” We had one of each and they each can be their own challenge but overall the gangplank that you use to get to shore is handy and you tie up at a 45 degree angle to trees, rocks, or other solid things you find. We found sturdy trees each time.
One person will get wet shoes (at least I did!) each time you get settled or depart a new site but did not need to get wet beyond my knees. It helped a bit to push the boat away from shore but frankly the boat is so heavy that it was probably all in my mind.
Another item on navigation is that by NPS rules you have to have a small boat that you tow behind your houseboat. We rented a small “Lund” 15 foot rowboat with an outboard motor. They also had fishing boats, pontoons, and other options that add to the cost but are more comfortable if you plan to do a lot of exploring. It may be a trade-off as we had to drive our houseboat further to avoid driving the small boat across a big lake like Namakan. We used ours to head the last few miles to Kettle Falls, explore some bays after finding our site for the night, take photos, and head to Mukooda Lake.
The Cost
There is no debating it — a Houseboat rental is expensive. All in for our three nights on the boat including fuel and the tow behind, plus the night at the lodge through Voyagaire’s Bed and Breakfast package (more on that below) totaled about $2,500. I’ll let that sink in for a minute…
Now when you put it in some context and realize that the cost includes lodging, transportation (once you get to Northern Minnesota) and your activities for the time it feels a bit better as you essentially have one big payment to them rather than a series of smaller ones to different companies like a hotel, guide service, gas station, etc. Some ways to defray the cost is that there is a discount when you rent for a full 7 days and you could rent a bigger boat and split the cost among a few families. Also, if you have your own tow behind boat that would save $250 or so.
One item we didn’t do that I expect would add up is the hospitality service which you pay a deposit for but get credited back if you don’t use. This service will bring you nearly anything they can get their hands on from ice cream to beverages to foods.
We heard people on the radio order the fixins for root bear floats, hamburgers, cigarettes, family size Doritos, beer, ice, garbage bags, a pump out of their bathroom holding tank (this is rare), and more. If you stayed for a week I would suggest you should expect to use this at some point to restock some food but for three to four nights if you plan your meals ahead of time and bring enough snacks you will be fine for space in the fridge.
Voyagaire had a Bed and Breakfast package when we rented where if you stayed the night before going out on your houseboat at their lodge, you were able to get out on your houseboat in the morning rather than having to wait til the afternoon. This was a great option for us as it allowed us the time to get up to the Kettle Falls Hotel and still have time to explore some other areas within the few days we had on our houseboat.
We weren’t sure what to expect of this houseboat vacation but it ended up being an amazing trip and something we would do again. For more about what to do in Voyageurs, check out this post.
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