Twenty-four Hours in Isle Royale National Park, Michigan

This national park is included on a list of the top six least-visited national parks. It’s not for lack of beauty, but simply because they are all hard to get to. Isle Royale sits in the middle of Lake Superior, 55 miles as the crow flies from Copper Harbor in Michigan. I’ve always had my eye on Isle Royale, though, and finally we had our opportunity to go. It was part of the reason we were staying in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

We were told to be at the harbor at 7AM for an 8AM departure on the Isle Royal Queen. We would be staying overnight at Rock Harbor Lodge, so we had duffel bags. The ships crew hoisted them onto the boat and we never saw them again until we were in our room at the lodge. Besides us were more people with luggage, large excited groups of backpackers with their stuffed packs, which also got loaded, and a handful of daytrippers.

It was exciting to be on the boat and finally on our way.

The ride is over three hours, plus a wait to get off boarded and a talk by the park rangers before being turned loose. I’m not sure if its worth it to just come for the day. The boat leaves Isle Royale at 3PM, and of course you need to be there early again, so for your well-over six hour boat ride, you barely get a couple of hours to explore. That’s good, I guess, if you just want to see it and say you’ve been there.

There’s not a lot to see from the boat. We could see the Keweenaw Peninsula for a long time off in the distance. For an interval of time there was just water. Lake Superior is the largest of all the Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area at 31,700 square miles. It also holds 3 quadrillion gallons of water, enough to cover North and South America with a foot of water. There have been over 350 shipwrecks on the lake, and its cold water has preserved them for divers. The number of shipwrecks is why there are so many lighthouses.

Finally, Isle Royale in view!

We arrived in Rock Harbor, which is on the northeast side of the island. The only other settlement is Windigo, which is on the southwest side and serves the boats coming from Minnesota. It takes five hours to ride a boat from one end to the other; the distance is 45 miles. It takes a backpacker 4 or 5 days to reach Windigo.

Rock Harbor would be our center of life for the next day; if we wanted to leave the area, there were only hiking trails that led into the interior.

At first, we needed a map to get around. Signboards were very helpful. There’s no internet here! By the time we left we knew pretty well what was where.

The dining building is a restaurant on one side and a fast-food place called the Grill on the other. After lunch at the Grill, we went out for a hike as our room was not yet ready. We chose the Stoll Memorial Trail, seen on the bottom right of the map. After a half hour, Cal declared that he was done and wanted to turn around. The day was warm, the sun was bright, and his hat was in his luggage. I had no thought of turning around and kept going.

What a beautiful, untrammeled place, all quiet save for birdsong.

At some point in my hike, I passed a sign that stated I was now in wilderness, and past the Park Service’s maintenance. Wilderness? When in my life have I ever been in true wilderness? Perhaps somewhere in the Rockies? I pondered that as I walked.

There were many wildflowers to enjoy along the way.

I thought it might be nice to get to the tip of the island at Scoville Point, but it isn’t the tip. Blake Point is. But Scoville was good enough, and it felt wonderful to sit and enjoy the day when I reached it.

On the way back I chose a different trail, and this took me to Smithwick Mine. It was just a hole in the ground, but a man named Smithwick tried mining copper for a couple of years. It wasn’t profitable.

Large mammals live on the island (but no bears). It is assumed that they crossed over to the island during winters when the lake was frozen. But how did the Isle Royale red squirrel get here? It’s not known, but they’ve been here so long, they are considered to be their own subspecies. They are smaller and make different sounds than the ones we are familiar with. I wasn’t lucky enough to see a moose, but I was excited to see a squirrel at the Smithwick Mine ruins.

After my hike our room was ready. It was very basic, but did have a large picture window where we could look out at the lake.

We dined on fish in the restaurant and took a post-dinner stroll to Tobin Lake. It is where people land if they arrive by airboat. It was still bright day as the sun sets late here.

We fell asleep while enjoying the view in our room with the windows open. It was still light out at 10 PM, which is when I took the picture below. I woke up later and could see stars as well as the Milky Way. Windows still open, I was lulled back to sleep by the sound of the waves.

In the morning, we hiked in the other direction after breakfast and admired a duck with no less than 23 fuzzy ducklings. We stopped to look at Suzy’s Cave. It was a shallow cave, probably hollowed out by the lake at one time.

We hung out on the beach for a little bit:

Lake Superior showed us the capriciousness of her weather. While the previous day had been sunny and warm, this day was overcast and cool. Cal reminded me of the weather forecast: it was due to rain, so we came back to the harbor at a pretty good clip.

In a place as remote as Isle Royale, everybody becomes your friend and we talked to many people. There was the couple on the boat going over who were going backpacking for 5 days. We swapped hiking and traveling stories, which made the trip pass quickly. Our server at dinner in the restaurant was an Ecuadorian law student who was eager to chat; he’d worked at Isle Royale several summers.

But the couple who stood out for me were the folks we shared a table with in the lunch area for two hours while it poured rain outside. They’ve been on a mission to see every single one of the main 63 National Parks in the system. Isle Royale was number 61. That includes Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and all of the parks in Alaska except for the two they have left to go. The husband started showing their pictures: the fat bears catching salmon in Alaska, the peaks of Denali. Then he moved on to their other adventures: animals on safari in Africa (Tanzania and Kenya are better than South Africa, if you ever want to go), penguins in Antartica, Machu Pichu, Easter Island, the list went on. I have never in my life met such a well-traveled yet totally unassuming couple, and they were fascinating.

On the way back, we sat with a woman who had solo backpacked on the island for five days. The weather had been beautiful. She showed us pictures of the animals she’d seen: a family of otters, a moose with baby, and a fox. She bested my mama duck with the 23 ducklings by showing me a picture of a loon mama with 32 chicks, including one on her back. I thought that I would have liked to have seen all of that, but I decided that at this point in my life I wouldn’t want to spend five days in the wilderness to do it.

These peoples’ stories, plus our own, have all been wrapped up in the memory of our time here. It was special and unique and not something I will quickly forget.

Next time: a visit to Bayfield, Wisconsin