From Detroit Lakes To Orr To Minneapolis – Here’s What We Did

After staying a few days in Detroit Lakes, MN, Shae, Truffles and I continued on to Minneapolis via Orr which was a bit of a diversion. That’s because she’d gotten a bear photography experience as an early birthday present at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary (read more about that here).

We did a few fun things along the way that individually weren’t really worth a blog post (other than the wildlife sanctuary) but did deserve a mention, so here’s a quick roundup of what we did on our way from Detroit Lakes to Minneapolis via Orr.

Forestedge Winery In Laporte

About 1.5 hours after leaving Detroit Lakes, we saw a sign for Forestedge Winery. We weren’t in a particular hurry, so we decided to stop there to do a quick wine tasting.

Forestedge has a couple of dozen different wines you can try in pre-selected flights, or you can just get a glass or bottle of wine. Unlike most wineries, Forestedge doesn’t use grapes for their wines, instead using different fruits like rhubarb, blackcurrant, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry and more.

I tend to prefer red wines, so I picked flight 3 – a selection of semi-dry wines:

• Paul Bunyan Red (blackcurrant and plum)
• Paul Bunyan Jazz (blackcurrant and plum)
• Plum
• Raspberry
• Blackcurrant

I was driving the rest of the way, so I stopped there. Shae tried a couple of different flights – flights 4 and 5 which were semi sweet and semi sweet/sweet respectively.

It was a nice stop and, as fruit wines go, they were decent. Well, other than the pineapple one which was weird tasting; that was surprising as we’d both expected that would be one of the better ones. However, none of the wines were so good that we wanted to take a bottle with us. To their credit, Forestedge prices their bottles competitively – most cost $16.99 + tax which is less than you’d normally pay for a bottle at a winery.

Itasca State Park / Mississippi River Headwaters In Park Rapids

We were glad to have stopped at Forestedge Winery because the owner highlighted something we’d forgotten about which had been on our list of places to visit in Minnesota – Itasca State Park.

That had been somewhere we’d wanted to visit because it’s home to Lake Itasca which is where the Mississippi River starts. The state park was only 30 minutes from the winery, so we decided to add that to our journey that day.

There are several information boards when you first arrive that share details about the Mississippi River and the local area, then it’s a short walk down a trail to the Mississippi River Headwaters.

There are large rocks spanning the water, so this is the only place where you can walk from one side of the Mississippi River to the other.

Norman’s One Stop In Orr

Finding somewhere to stay up near Orr was tricky. There were lots of cabins and bed and breakfasts in Orr, but they were fairly pricey. There were more reasonably priced hotels in Hibbing, but that was an hour south of Orr and Shae’s bear experience started early in the morning, so we didn’t want her to have an hour’s drive before that.

I spent some time Googling and found a good solution. There’s a motel in Orr called Norman’s One Stop. They’re not listed on OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like Hotels.com, Expedia, etc. which is why it hadn’t shown up in any of my searches up to that point. They do have their own website though and that listed their rooms as costing $55.92 + tax for single rooms and $68.91 + tax for double rooms – far more reasonable than anything else I’d found. Although they have a website, they don’t take bookings online, so I called to make a reservation for a couple of nights and we were sorted.

It ended up being good value for what they charge. The rooms are a little dated, but it was clean and comfortable, there was a good-sized mini fridge and the shower had surprisingly good water pressure.

Norman’s One Stop itself is a store selling all kinds of items and it seemed like a safe enough area that we felt fine leaving some of our stuff in the back seat of our car rather than having to unload it all for just two nights.

If you have an RV, they also have some RV sites with electricity, water, Wi-Fi, picnic tables, etc. The RV sites look out on Orr Bay on the eastern side of Pelican Lake.

Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary In Orr

Our reason for being up in Orr was so that Shae could visit the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary. They’re open to all members of the public, but they also run a special experience where photographers can pay extra to get up (fairly) close and (almost) personal with the bears.

Shae’s dad had gotten her this as an early birthday present and if you know anything about Shae, you know that she loves animals and animal experiences. Photographers who take advantage of this opportunity are down at ground level with the bears at a safe distance, but there’s no barrier between them and the bears’ natural habitat. It was therefore an exciting experience for Shae in more ways than one! Be sure to read her separate post about that, but here’s a couple of photos to whet your appetite.

T.Pattenn Café In Orr

Shae stopped by this café to grab breakfast on her way to the bears and loved their donuts. If you know anything else about Shae other than that she loves animals, it’s that she’s a donut aficionado. She really enjoyed the ones from T.Pattenn Café, although I wasn’t as big a fan of them as she was. They were good, but they were much more doughy than I normally care for.

Bent Paddle Brewing Co. In Duluth

Last year I’d read this post on Airstream Dog about their couple of days in Duluth which made me interested in staying there for a few days, especially because there were other things in the area that looked interesting too.

Unfortunately the timing of things in May and June, as well as the cost of hotels and Airbnbs in Duluth during that time of year, meant we weren’t able to fit a stay in there. However, we did stop in Duluth for 2-3 hours on our way down from Orr to Minneapolis. Our first stop was Bent Paddle Brewing Co. which the people behind Airstream Dog had enjoyed and I can see why. For starters, it’s very dog-friendly as they have a spacious deck and additional outdoor seating where pups are allowed, not to mention the fact that some of the employees would stop by tables to give dog treats and give them pets.

They have a decent selection of beers too – something like 20 different beers were available, along with non-alcoholic, THC and CBD beverages.

I prefer darker beers like porters and stouts. Some breweries only have one or two of those, so I was pleased to see that Bent Paddle had more than that. As a result, I got a flight with four different dark beers:

• Black Ale (porter/stout)
• Campfire Black Ale
• White Russian (cold press black)
• 10 Year Anniversary (an imperial stout)

My favorite was the Campfire. It was described as having chocolate and marshmallow notes and sure enough, it did. It wasn’t as sweet as it sounds, but did taste very good.

Duluth Cider

While we were having a drink at Bent Paddle, someone we got chatting to (I can’t remember if it was the couple at the table next to use or one of the employees who stopped to give Truffles a treat) mentioned that Duluth Cider was nearby. Shae doesn’t care for beer, but she does like cider and so we decided to stop by there afterwards so she could get something she likes.

We’ve been to a few cideries on the road trip and they can be hit or miss for me. The main problem I have is that there’s sometimes not much flavor distinction between different ciders, so they end up tasting fairly similar. That wasn’t the case with Duluth Cider though; not only were their ciders all tasty, but each one I tried was noticeably different and tasted like their descriptions.

After finishing up at Duluth Cider, we continued on to Minneapolis where we spent a few days before both of us had to go off on work trips. We then spent another couple of weeks in Minneapolis upon our return, so we’ll have more about what we got up to there in our next couple of posts.