I’m planning on publishing several articles over the next couple of weeks concerning my recent trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota (my first in seven years!)  There will be some wildflower reporting involved, and some wildlife reporting as well, but there will also be some logistical reporting as well.  This is one of those – the lodging in which we stayed on our trip.

Our entry into the Boundary Waters is through Ely, Minnesota.  There are other jumping off points, but this is the one I’ve used on each of my 8 or 10 trips into the BW.  Ely is approximately 20 hours of travel time from where we started in Tennessee, at the house of my good friend and usual Boundary Waters companion, Dave Ridge, and a nearby stop to pick up his daughter, Bekah.  We wanted to reduce lodging expense, but I can no longer handle a drive of that length without a sleep stop, so we planned to drive part way, starting early on Saturday, complete the drive to Ely on Sunday morning, and reach our Moose Lake tow/entry in early- or mid-afternoon on Sunday.

The last few trips I’ve made I have stopped in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  That’s about 12 to 14 hours of road time from our starting point, and puts Ely reachable by late next morning if you get an early start.  Bekah made lodging reservations for us at the Holiday Inn Express in Chippewa Falls, just north of Eau Claire.  I haven’t seen the tab for the room, but I can book that room (with a Senior Discount) for $99.95 plus tax.  A bit pricey for my Scroogish attitude, but split three ways, not really a bad deal.  As for accomodation, what can I say – this is a Holiday Inn Express.  Checkin was easy, the rooms were clean an comfortable, and there was an excellent breakfast (as far as “free with room” breakfasts go) available at 6:30 the next morning.  6:30 initially seemed a little late for us, but the breakfast was actually made available a bit early, and we were running a bit later than we had planned, so that wasn’t a problem.  We checked out well-rested (well, except for Bekah, who had to deal with two snoring men in the same room) and were quite satisfied with the Holiday Inn Express – Chippewa Falls – experience.  If this is in your price range, it’s a good jumping off point for reaching Ely relatively early the next day.

Heading for Ely from the Holiday Inn Express, Chippewa Falls, WI

We entered the Boundary Waters that Sunday pretty much as planned.  Our plan was to exit the following Sunday morning after a short paddle that day, head to Ely for lunch, and drive part way home.  A fire caused by a storm, and a dreary, rainy, windy Saturday morning changed those plans (I’m sure I’ll cover that in more detail in later posts), so we changed plans.  We’d get a tow out early Saturday afternoon, and get a motel/hotel in Ely for Saturday night.  That would give Dave an opportunity to show Bekah the “Ely experience” since she was a first-timer to the Boundary Waters.

Little did we plan on an arts festival in Ely that weekend.  We (Bekah in the lead) had a pretty difficult time finding room in the inn, so to speak.  Bekah called the Ely Chamber of Commerce, and the representative there was helpful in tracking down some possibilities.  A call to the White Iron Beach Resort a few miles outside of Ely secured us a 2-bedroom cabin for the night for $140.  We didn’t know what to expect, but were generally pleased when we drove up to our cabin, since it seemed newer than some of the other nearby cabins at the resort.  The deck overlooking the lake, and the kitchen/dining/living areas were really quite nice.  There was a full-sized refrigerator (with a warning to put only pre-cooled items in there), a full sized gas stove, along with a full-sized double sink and a reasonable amount of cabinet space (certainly we didn’t need any for our overnight stay.)  There were pots and pans and dishes.  There was no coffee maker or teapot, but I used a small pot to boil some water for an afternoon feed of my coffee habit.  I enjoyed sitting an reading in the chair in front of the window while Dave and Bekah drove back to town to get pizza for dinner.

There were some downsides to our visit.  The bathroom was pretty small, although acceptable.  The walls, however, stopped sound little better than curtains would have.  Bekah clearly heard my snoring through the adjacent bedroom walls, and in my bedroom next to the bathroom I could hear every sound in the bathroom.  Also, there was no heat in the bathroom.  The proprietor had not expected us to need any heat, and clearly the cabins were not designed for winter use, but the nights were in the 40’s, and for our southern blood, we needed heat.  Our friendly proprietor lit the single gas wall heater that was the source of heat for the entire cabin, and set it to “1”.  That was pretty cool, so we turned it up a little, not high, but enough so we’d know the heat was on.  Bedroom/bathroom doors were left open in the hope that some of that heat would reach those rooms.  However, in the morning the fire was out – out of gas!  We’re not certain what had happened – when mentioned at checkout (9 AM, by the way, to our surprise!) she said something about “the line must have gotten clogged”  but we know we had a cool morning.

Do I recommend White Iron Beach Resort?  That depends.  As shown in the photo below, it is a pretty location, on what seems to be a very nice lake, and it is convenient to Ely.  $140 for a single night in a 2nd-row 2 bedroom cabin doesn’t seem unreasonable (we were in cabin 8) – that’s actually slightly less than a day for their published weekly rate in September.  The accomodations were clean and comfortable.  If you don’t have a problem with no sound isolation in the cabin, and won’t need heat or can ensure that you’ll have adequate heat (blankets are in the chest in each bedroom) then I’d say go for it.

View from Cabin 8, White Iron Beach Resort

One of the highlights in our trips is (depending on timing) a stop at Wisconsin’s Humbird Cheese to supply up on good cheese.  They have a store in Tomah, and one (called Market Square) in Wisconsin Dells.  Both stores open at 8 AM, so we figured that if we couldn’t get to Tomah before the store closed for the evening, we’d catch the Wisconsin Dells store when it opened at 8 AM, giving us about a 12 hour trip back to the Nashville area from there.  With that criteria, I looked for a hotel near Wisconsin Dells for our return trip.  I was originally only looking for “clean place to crash” for Dave and me since we thought Bekah was going to fly back due to her work schedule.  Those circumstances changed, and based on some online reviews and the low cost – $66 for a 2-queen room including tax – I thought the Best Western Ambassador might not be up to standards.  I was wrong.

The checkin experience was excellent, we were able to get food at a nearby Arby’s, and the rooms were clean, comfortable, roomy – really nice.  Maybe because it was the off season and there weren’t children running up and down the hallways of this resort-town hotel, this was also quiet.  The included breakfast, while not quite up to the standard of the earlier Holiday Inn Express, was quite adequate.  I had cereal, fruit, yogurt, an english muffin, and (of course!) coffee.  The coffee was good.  This was perhaps the best value I’ve had in a hotel room in quite a long time.  I would have expected to pay quite a bit more for this overall experience.

I don’t have a photo of the hotel, so I’m providing this next photo – that’s why we were there…

Smoked Cheddar from Market Square in Wisconsin Dells (Humbird)

We made it to the Nashville area after the night in the Best Western, and the following day my wife picked me up at Dave’s.  Since I was still on vacation, we planned on a couple of days visiting some historic sites in Franklin, just south of Nashville.  I had booked a room for two nights at La Quinta.  I decided we didn’t need the “suite” so went with the king room.  The price was $69 plus tax, coming to around $80 per night.  As we checked in, I noticed that they had waffle makers, but rather than being in the breakfast area, they were across the hall next to the front desk.  Odd.  Checkin was smooth, courteous, and efficient, but when I got onto the elevator, the floor was decidedly dirty.  As we stepped off the elevator for our fourth-floor room, the carpet for 10 or 15 feet each way from the elevator was dirty as well, and there was a musty odor in the hallway.  As we walked down the hall to our room, the carpeting became cleaner, and the room itself seemed clean, although my wife noted a grit on one of the counter surfaced in the room.  They have nice, new TV’s in the rooms, but one arm to the chair in the room was broken, making the chair less than comfortable.  There was a small coffee maker in the room, but no refrigerator or microwave – those come with the $30 more expensive “suite.”  We got a pretty good nights sleep – the bed was comfortable – but if we were sensitive to light, there would have been a problem, since their was a sizable band of light around the door from the hallway light.  I didn’t notice any noise, but if there had been noise in the hall, I’m certain it would have entered with the light.

The next morning I checked out the breakfast, and it seemed to be a couple of cereals, the waffles, and sugary pastries.  I had become ill, and we decided not to stay in town for that second night, but I was considering a different hotel even if we had decided to stay.  The management of the hotel said that the elevator and elevator areas were dirty because of the horse shows they had been having in the area lately, and the carpets were regularly cleaned, but being near time to replace, they didn’t look clean even though they were.  Possibly, but I looked pretty closely, and some of the dirt in the elevator looked to me like it had been there for a while (definitely for the 14+ hours we were there.)  I do not believe La Quinta will be on my short list of hotels, unless someone can convince me this was really an anomaly.

Happy travels.