Snowshoe Country Rustic Log Cabin Rentals

Information may not be reliable

Wolverine Cabin - named from the movie, "Running Free," (1993) partially filmed here. Image of young wolverines in the film - see Nature Notes.
Only ninety minutes from Duluth or four hours from the Twin Cities is some of the wildest hinterland in the Midwest. Whether your interests are canoeing, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, bird-watching, steaming away your cares in our log sauna, stargazing, or reading by a crackling woodstove, Snowshoe Country has something for you. Located east of Ely and not far from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, this facility is the ideal retreat for those who want to escape to a more primitive and pristine landscape. We're for individuals, couples, families and small groups. The modest fees for rental of our rustic log cabins are the same as fifteen years ago.
The high-elevation country of the eastern Superior National Forest is the closest thing in Minnesota to "going to the mountains" and we are given the longest winter and deepest snowpack of the region. Our extensive private trail system winds through a variety of boreal forest terrain. Many visitors see their first moose on the way up here - on Minnesota's moosiest trail.
Folks from around the country visit the area specifically for sightings of unfamiliar bird species. And it's not unusual to see or hear timber wolves.
Fishing is good year-around, with each lake and stream in the district hosting different species, including walleyes, northern pike, smallmouth bass, perch, bluegills and three varieties of trout.
July and August are times for blueberries, raspberries, and serviceberries - late August or early September for harvesting wild rice on Sand Lake. An Ely-Isabella autumn displays the brightest leaf colors in the region, and hiking, canoeing, and grouse hunting are common fall activities.
The camp is rarely full any time of the year and is a good place to find serious solitude and quiet. Canoes and snowshoes are part of the package. So get your sleeping bag, skis, or hiking/pac boots, food and camera together, call or email to reserve the rustic cabin of your choice, and give it a try. Experience Minnesota's authentic northwoods and truly wild places. Gift certificates are also available.
Moose image courtesy of Lynn Rogers, Ely MN.
This website was created by web designer Madelyn Lee of St. Paul, Minnesota, and is maintained by Willie, Amber and Ron.

high 30, low 21. Almost a foot of powder snow now on the ski and snowshoe trails. Ron and Steve (with help from Dan Donnelly) have been working on them this week and they're ready to go, including a new one back to the east branching off the Wendigo and Maymayguishi - "Spruce Grouse."
Thanksgiving weekend and the week before saw lots of skiing and snowshoeing and Christmas tree harvesting. Here's me (Willie), as Erin, Emma, Cindy, Steve and Cousin Raven prepare to go home with their stash.

As always, folks renting cabins in November or December (or past renters) are welcome to all the free balsam fir Christmas trees they can haul on their car. You just need a carrier of some kind, a handsaw, and some rope. These are trees that remain fresh and supple even if cut a month before use.

The roads are full of snow buntings (also known as snowbirds or snowflakes) exploding and scattering just ahead of Ron's Subaru on our daily trips to the mailbox five miles away. These songbirds, additionally known as dark-eyed and slate-colored juncos, are residents of the high arctic who winter in our northern latitudes. Males comprise much of the little groups, with females and young delegated to the more predator-risky edges of a particular flock.
Snowbirds are associated with our first snows, several of which we've experienced in the past few weeks. Enough snow now for good skiing and snowshoeing. We will finish up working on trails this weekend (Friday and Saturday), if anyone would like to join us in return for weekend lodging, just give a call to Ron.

On a less happy note, Amber passed away recently at the age of fourteen and Ron, Eddie and I miss her a lot. I still trot around our cabin at night hoping somehow that she'll reappear, and I'm saving her toys...
On 9/27, Ron wrote:

We took that last ride to the veterinarian in Ely this afternoon, Amber-bamber and I. Very sick recently, she wasn’t having as much fun the last week or so, but we know she had a good, long life. She had her little head in my lap the whole way there and we stopped by the roadside a few times to talk and reminisce. She passed quietly and quickly while I petted her. Dr. Chip, the vet, was very gentle and kind.
She loved kids more than anything. We will always remember the November ice-skating day a few years ago when she repeatedly helped granddaughters Erin and Emma get up after their tumbles while learning to ice-skate. She was always right there on the spot for them. And she had hundreds of friends among the cabin renters and log building students, joining us many times for slide shows and morning lectures in the classroom – especially enjoying the popcorn and other treats.
So, one of the sweetest little dog buddies we ever had is now buried, snug in a blanket, comfortable on her doggie bed, atop a small knoll south of the boathouse, overlooking the lake where she always had such good fun chasing sticks and shaking water on everyone - with canine cousins Teddy, Raven and Willie through the years. Her headstone is a flat piece of Ely greenstone.
Rest in peace, little Amber – you old red hug-retriever. One of the very best, you were.

Ron's kind of known for his habit of trying to whistle red foxes up to his car on Highway 2. He did it again today fairly successfully. Two weeks ago he whistled up a large radio-collared timber wolf, then got out of the car...then got back in quickly as the critter approached him to within a few yards. Dumb.

Earlier this summer:
While Ron was painting up his two old Grummans recently, news came that fiddler, mandolinist, guitarist, & all-around musician/teacher, Bill Hinkley, had passed away. He, Judy Larson, and Garrison Keillor, had borrowed those very same canoes in 1974, along with some tents and cook kits - from Ron - for a monumental canoe trip on the upper Mississippi River, which was broadcast on Keillor's (then) daily morning show on MPR.
Seems long ago for Ron, and Amber and I weren't even puppies yet.
Garrison did some nice tributes to Bill on his show, as did Jon Bream in the Minneapolis StarTribune. You can enjoy them, with music, on Keillor's websites.
Canoeing on the lake is good and Ron has taken us swimming and stick throwing frequently. Visitors have been swimming both at the canoe landing and the nearby beach.
Unusual spring. Tundra swans, trumpeter swans, sandhill cranes and Canada geese have all been observed in the Sand Lake vicinity this spring, and the latter three types, unlikely though it seems, could be hanging around the area. A very large group of geese, flying chaotically from the east at treetop level, landed on Sand River Memorial Day weekend.
A U.S. Forest Service employee claims she observed a wolverine walking around our driveway entrance one morning in early May. We saw one here in 1980 and there have been sporadic sightings in NE Minnesota through the years.
And it's early egg-laying for the painted turtles on the beaches and roadsides, while the various kinds of frogs are still vocalizing in the marsh by the building yard. This is a snapping turtle by the sauna well on 6/4/10 laying her huge stash of eggs in a hole she dug moments earlier.

The woodchuck in the den between Ron's office and our dogyard is keeping our attention (& sometimes making us bark) each day as she comes and goes on her foraging jaunts. Dandelions and just plain old grass are the big favorites with the chuck crowd right now. Next month the newly-borns will be following the adults around. There seems to be a family beneath every woodpile and cabin. The fox in the front meadow is hanging around close in hopes of a meal, and vixen often uses abandoned (read "eaten") woodchuck's dens as makings for her own.

An April trip to Arizona for an International Log Builders' Association conference still has Ron stricken. He sits and gazes at the Sedona rocks on his desk. The magic red rock country around Sedona, the Grand Canyon, the deserts of the central and the forests of the north, will do that to you, he says, not to mention thinking about all the neat kinds of cactus.

Doubtless he'll "desert" (sorry) us again for other trips to the Southwest in the future. But we had lots of fun in his absence with his stand-in caretaker, concierge, office manager and National Weather Service Sand Lake Station daily instrument-reader & compiler, Madelyn, who treated us extremely well - like the best friends that we dogs are to everyone.

Ron visited the North American Bear Center in Ely in March for a lecture by researcher Lynn Rogers. It's open each day this time of year, and the three resident bears came out of hibernation very early.

And the March log building course took a Saturday night trip to the International Wolf Center to observe the weekly feeding of road-kill deer to the resident 5-pack, after which we (also) had dinner in Ely, appetites sharpened and whetted.

Cabins full of guests in late March - snowless, so they had a good time leisurely sauntering around the trails, hitting the sauna, and even taking Eddie for walks (like a jet airplane on a rope). Sand Lake wolf pack howling a lot lately, likely voicing welcome to the hundreds of deer returning (very) early to our high plateau (Superior Uplands) from their wintering yards a thousand feet lower near Lake Superior.
Lots of cabin openings for March and April - some on weekends, lots on weekdays.

After this two-day blizzard, hundreds of small trees and bushes were weighed down over the trails. On February 6th and 7th, Ron's son, Steve, and two friends, Aaron Mertes and Dan Donnelly, worked hard to remove all of the obstacles, pack the trails, and make them better than ever.
The town of Ely has had their winter festival and the snow carvings were spectacular. Here are a few:

You may want to take a glance at a January-born female bear cub (named Hope) near Ely. The North American Bear Center's researcher, Lynn Rogers, installed a video camera inside the den of Lily, a research bear, and displayed the birth of a cub in late January. You can follow the progress of the cub and mother at www.bear.org. Daily explanations of what's happening appear just below the live video. For now, the cub is content to suckle milk, sleep, make noise, grow, and play with mom, but it makes appearances from time to time, and the sow (mother) leaves the den now to forage occasionally. When you visit Snowshoe Country, you may want to visit the Bear Center west of Ely - 30 miles from here.

When you visit - on your way up to Snowshoe Country just before Mt. Weber, which you will view mainly when you're southbound, pause and consider the two-mile stretch of 300+ year-old Eastern White Pines along the road. Think about how when these giants were seedlings, the 3-400 year extended-winter regime of the Little Ice Age held full-sway over Europe and North America. And, culturally, in Europe it was the time of the Late Baroque, and some great composers were busy dreaming up what would become some of the most important western classical music, e.g., Vivaldi, J.S. Bach, Handel, Telemann, Pachelbel, and Scarlatti.

Several funny happenings on Christmas week. Some guests encountered a fox on a trail with a snowshoe hare in its mouth. Vixen was so preoccupied she almost walked into the snowshoers.
A couple staying in the Sunrise Cabin had their skis and tracks peed on by several timber wolves sauntering through their yard of an early morning.
And lots of moose on the roads licking that tasty salt. Ron and I (Willie) almost nailed two on a night trip from Duluth. Many guests have encountered moose the past two weeks - on the road - also some wolves, a fisher and a lynx.

Bears are back in hibernation now after a brief period of getting up and ambling around during the warmer part of November. May they rest well and not be confused again by unseasonably warm weather.
Woodchucks (groundhogs) are undergoing a much deeper hibernation in their home dens. There seems to be a record population the past few years, including some black colored ones. Few know how complicated their burrows are, with separate rooms for bathroom, food storage, sleeping, and even a nursery. Both parents tend to the youngsters until they disperse to begin their own lives in mid-summer. They will be out scurrying around again in mid-April. Meanwhile, we will all miss watching them.

From the past: 2008 & 2009:
Painted and snapping turtles finished laying their eggs in early July in roadways and beaches - anywhere there's gravel and sand. Young frogs and toads are still crawling around all over the place. Here's an image of Amber last year conversing with a snapper laying her eggs by the dogyard. Several months later, some 80 babies crawled from the hole - on their way to the water.

And an excellent winter 08-09 was - with nearly 130 inches of snow. Thanks to all of the interesting folks (and your great dogs) who enjoyed the cabins, skiing, snowshoeing, and trails this past season. We sincerely hope that you will come back for some canoeing and hiking fall. Some cabins are almost always open, even on short notice.
Some remnants of the winter happenings are below:
Greg and Traci Pence, from Lakeville, got close to an otter emerging from a hole in the ice on the Sand River near camp in late March:

Music at SnowshoeGuests Ralph and Mary Brindle of Edina filled the forest around Sand Lake with great music from their alpenhorns (alphorns) on a winter weekend.

Real fox news.
The resident fox is still running around our yard and by the other cabins scarfing up scraps and just gawking at us silently from time to time. He/she appears to have a more difficult time getting through the snow with the short legs. This pictured one is identical to our local "yard fox," before it recently ate a 20 pound (approximately its own weight) bag of dog food left unintentionally in the driveway by Ron. It then tore the sack to shreds and most likely went off for a very long nap, probably appearing like this:

Timber wolf & otter happenings.Some guests have been viewing river otters at work and play over on the Sand River (where there are holes in the ice) and also around places where folks have been ice-fishing - where they can fetch an easy meal. Erin says this one's name would be Otto the Otter.
Ron's twice a day journey to the mailbox up on Highway 1 is usually uneventful except for an occasional moose sighting. However, on Groundhog Day he was reading a newspaper in the Toyota cab when two wolves strolled down the road almost right up to his truck.
The evening after Christmas, a three or four-wolf choir put on quite the howling concert out by the marsh near the road. When Ron checked out the tracks later, it appeared that the local pack was on the trail of a buck who forgot to migrate from the high country in time (usually by early December). All parties were finding the deep snow difficult to jump through. Conclusion unknown...

Moose.Lots of moose have been seen eating salt on the highway this season. While Ron was pushing snow on December 12th, a moose walked right in front of the pickup at the base of the driveway. No camera handy, of course. Had there been, the photo would have looked like this:

Ron, who keeps a precipitation station for the Minnesota Climatology Office, measured a total of 163.8 inches of snowfall here at Sand Lake during the winter of 2007-2008 (November - April). As is often the case, This was one of the higher snowfall sums recorded in the state. For more daily info on relative snowfall, check out:
http://climate.umn.edu/doc/snowmap.htm

Early-season ice skating.After shoveling snow from the ice, skating was fun on Thanksgiving weekend for granddaughters Emma and Erin. Here's Erin and me (Amber) taking a break on the ice.

Fishing has been fair this winter, but was even better last fall. During September, on a day following extremely violent lightning storms with 2+ inches of rain, walleyes were on a feeding binge on the shorelines. Minnows took these from shallow water for John Nelson of Minneapolis.

The wild rice crop on Sand Lake was good in 2008 and some folks were out in early September obtaining some rice samples for educational project displays - visiting group of naturalists from Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, MN. L-R: Josh, Jessamy, Kelly, Alexis, and John in front.