My husband, Chuck, and I went wandering a couple of weekends ago. We traveled down, then up, to Roseau, MN for a weekend of sightseeing and four-wheeling. It is a long drive to Roseau, but interesting.
There are a lot of similarities between the town on the northwestern border and our community. Roseau is 10 miles from the Canadian border; we are 40. There is an obvious Border Patrol presence there, as there is here. Like here, signs in restaurants and resorts say “Canadian at Par.” There are a lot of small resorts and friendly dining spots filled with hunters and fishermen.
Four-wheeling was different in the northwestern Beltrami State Forest though. Like here, most of the ATV trails are old logging roads, roads that can be traveled by four-wheeler or car (although not a shiny new car!). However, the scenery in Beltrami State Forest doesn’t have the variety of our Grand Portage or Pat Bayle State Forest. In Beltrami, the old roads were sandy and smooth, cutting through miles of manicured pine plantations. Trails led to interesting remnants of an old pioneer town and a historic church. But Beltrami lacks the amazing variety of our northeastern forests.
In just a few hours of riding in Cook County, an ATV rider travels through an assortment of forests. When we ride here, we can start among birch and aspen, travel through maple and end under majestic old white pines. We ride under thick canopies and through wide-open fields, along sparkling rivers and lakes and up ridges with amazing vistas. The roads are rocky, strewn with rocks from the size of peas to boulders. Wildflowers of all types grow along the roads and we see wildlife ranging from fox and bear to grouse and moose.
As we ended our day of riding in Beltrami, Chuck and I both said we enjoyed it, but we preferred riding at home in Cook County.
We also spent some time sightseeing, stopping for a tour of the Polaris factory in Roseau and the Wm. S. Marvin Visitor Center in Warroad, just down the road from Roseau. The Polaris factory was really interesting and we were impressed with the company’s policy of loaning ATVs and snowmobiles to workers. A large sign at the entrance to the factory declares, “Understand the Riding Experience. Live the Riding Experience. Work To Make It Better.” The Polaris employees we talked to had an obvious pride in their work that was a pleasure to see.
The Marvin Windows Visitor Center is a beautifully arranged, interactive museum. We had fun pushing buttons to learn trivia about windows and tinkering with the software to design our dream home with dream windows. The research and development section was especially interesting, with a startling display on how windows are tested to withstand hurricanes.
One of my favorite things about the museum was the history of the Marvin family and its ties to Warroad. It was a company that worked hard to build a good reputation and succeeded. When the window plant burned to the ground in 1961, the family received offers to help with rebuilding from other towns and other states—if it moved away from Warroad. The family said no, with Tut Marvin stating succinctly, “Warroad is home, by God. I’m staying here if I have to dig ditches.”
I could empathize with that, as can many, many, folks who work hard to be able to live in Cook County. Roseau and Warroad are nice towns. They have friendly people and great ATV trails and historic places to visit. But neither of them is home to me.
That thought was driven home by the winds of Monday, September 28. Standing at the Grand Marais harbor, buffeted by gale force winds while trying to take a picture of the waves hammering the shore, marveling at the beauty of the Big Lake, I thought again that Roseau and Warroad are nice—but they aren’t home.
I may not have gone where
I intended to go, but I think I
have ended up where I intended
to be.
Douglas Adams
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