Day 5 - Isle Royale National Park

After a long day on the ferry I am sitting in Isle Royale National Park. I can't even describe how beautiful this park is. Also, to say that it is remote would be considered an understatement. The logistics of getting here are challenging and it isn't like Yellowstone where you can just drive here. Your options are to take a ferry from Grand Portage (like I did), ferry from Copper Harbor or Houghton, MI, take a seaplane or your own boat. I was talking with someone on the ferry and he told me more people visit Yellowstone in a day than Isle Royale (pronounced Royal instead of Roy-AL) in an entire season. Because of that, it is absolutely pristine and a hidden gem of the national park system. Basically, it is more wilderness preserve than national park. But before I get into more details, here is a timeline of the day.

Wake up call was around 5:15 am because I wanted to eat breakfast and get going off to the boat. Now, they had sent me my confirmation email a while back and it had some boarding passes and things like that. So you would assume this was a pretty formalized process of getting on the boat, right? Wrong. The captain and first mate looked like two guys that would rather go on a fishing trip in the woods rather than operate a ferry. A couple of rough-ish looking guys but unbelievably nice. They loaded up my bike, asked me about my trip, and told me a bit about the island. Nothing fancy about the boat. Didn't even have to show the boarding pass. Just gave them my name.

 

 

There was an observation deck on the front and back of the boat. We left at 7:30 am and there were maybe 15 people on board. There are two main harbors at Isle Royale. Windigo and Rock Harbor. At these places there are ranger stations, trading posts/stores (you'd be surprised what you can buy there...a lot of food, ice cream, beer and wine, etc) and places to get your permit for the island. Let's back up a bit first...as a kid from Elgin I can't say I had a lot of opportunities to be on a large boat. My aquatic credentials involve either a pontoon or a regular speedboat in a Nebraska lake. Not the best sample size. So with that I took a sea sickness pill before I left this morning just in case. I am not sure how bad I would have gotten but I had no issues. The stretch from Grand Portage to Windigo was about two and a half hours and it was choppy. There were times where it felt like the boat was going to tip over the side but nothing happened. I thought back to flying on a plane with a former co-worker whose brother was a pilot. He said, "You should only get worried if the flight attendants get scared." The guy steering the boat was casually eating a Snickers bar. Ok, then.

Nothing fancy inside the boat.

 

So like I said, the boat makes a few stops. In Windigo we docked for 30 minutes while some passengers left and others got on. There are other small docks where people can get on hiking trails or canoe routes that we stopped at along the way. We also had to listen to Ranger Katie tell us about the Leave No Trace aspect of the park. Most of the campsites are backcountry (there are 30-40 campsites in the park and all but two are primitive...catching your own fish is encouraged!) and she demonstrated the animals we need to worry about by using stuffed animals. Not making that up. The island is 45 miles long and there are only seven wolves, 750 moose (the most dangerous animal here) and a ton of foxes.

We made several stops to either pick people up or drop them off in the small bayside docks. I ended up getting to Rock Harbor at 2:45 pm. Long day on a boat! I locked my bike up on a rail near the ranger station and went to my campsite. Pictures from the trip:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boat stopped here to deliver mail for the island. There are numerous people that live here and it is mostly park service employees.

 

 

Here is my campsite for the night. In this particular campsite there are 20 "normal" sites that are similar to where I have been staying. There are also nine shelters like this one that are first come, first served. There was one left so I took it! It allows me to store my gear a little easier and keep it away from the foxes and squirrels. Plus I don't have to put up my tent this way!

Some photos from the hike to here. Not very long of a hike.

 

 

 

And my camp stove hard at work cooking up a late lunch...

 

Reading a book on the iPad. Really roughing it.

 

And finally a couple visitors near my campsite.

 

 

Time to cook dinner! I don't leave until 2:45 pm tomorrow so looks like I am sleeping in. Outside of that I plan on going on a hike or two to explore some things near here. There is a three mile hike that is a loop near here that they were showing on the ranger station as an idea to do do I think I will do that in the morning. Until tomorrow...