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Tofte, MN → Isle Royale NP → Tofte, MN 248.6 mi (400.1 km) |
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I’ve waited a while for this isle, everyone!
Today’s national park exploration happened by pure chance: the ferry to Isle Royale was completely booked up through the end of the year, until a single opening popped up! So naturally, I had to snag it. This morning, I was up and at ’em early to bridge the 60-mile gap between my hotel and the boat to adventure, and once at the Hat Point Ferry Terminal to catch the Sea Hunter III, I was ready to check this last Michigan national park off my list!
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It could not have been better timing! The sky was crystal blue today, and the water was glass! The boat cut right across the open water of Lake Superior, known to the Ojibwe as Gichi Gami, an hour and a half to traverse just about thirty miles. We paused long enough to look down on the dark outline of the S.S. America, a passenger ship that ran aground here on June 7, 1928. It’s one of ten historic shipwrecks around the island and a popular diving spot for visitors to the island! This wreck was one of few where all hands survived, but tragically, there was a dog on board who did not make it off the ship on time!
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At last, we arrived at the port of Windigo, named less for the mythical cannibal giant of Algonquin lore, more for a copper mining company that dug here from 1890 to 1892 and was defeated by low-grade ore! The national park sign was surrounded by moose antlers, a reminder that Isle Royale is the center of the world’s longest-running predator-prey study, ongoing since 1958! Wolves and moose are the largest predators and prey on the island, probably because they don’t hibernate and were able to cross the lake’s ice in the winter. This gave scientists the perfect way to study their behavior in isolation, with some surprising results! For one, studying moose bones is teaching biologists about how gum disease can lead to arthritis and osteoporosis, which they can apply to human medicine!
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Tragically, I was not going to have lots of time to look for moose here, and the wolves (thankfully) were clustered on the north side of the island. So with only four hours to enjoy Isle Royale and no single-beaver kayaks available to rent, the ranger at the visitor center directed me to take a stroll down the Feldtman Lake Trail to the Grace Creek Overlook. Though I wouldn’t have time to make it to either namesake lake or creek, I was promised some fine views along the route!
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Instead of moose, there was plenty of moss on this trail! The forests of Isle Royale are dominated by coniferous woodland, mostly white spruce and balsam fir, and the poorly drained soil and lake-cooled air make this a perfect environment for lush plant growth!
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And color too! The trail was lined with bright blue berries, popping up from the forest floor like lollipops! They were super pretty and looked just like candy, but I knew not to eat them! These blue beauties were Clinton borealis, the bluebead lily, which ranges west to the Atlantic and south to Appalachia! These are pretty but not super appetizing, even a bit toxic, so I kept on walking.
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I crossed a bridge over a small stream and discovered that slightly toxic berries weren’t my only concern on Isle Royale. The water, mixed with the shade of the pine trees made this a haven for mosquitoes! That made for one big conundrum. If I wanted to stay cool, I’d get eaten by bugs, and if I wanted to dodge the bugs, I’d need to step out into the heat!
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Bugs aside, I couldn’t help but detour onto a tiny slip of sand as a frog hopped past me from the water into the brush. It felt super strange to see a frog hopping out of the ocean onto a beach, but then I remembered I wasn’t oceanside at all! These Great Lakes are so very, very enormous that I’d completely forgotten this was all freshwater!
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The vistas were few on this trail, and because of that, I took a closer look at the neat plants lining the trail, like the fuzzy sphagnum moss growing up around the lilies! The water that makes this place good for mosquitoes also makes it ideal for pretty mosses like this! They’re responsible for making the soil kind of acidic, which is just perfect for the berry-producing plants that grow here!
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In addition to the blue lilies, there were flourishes of red! These were Cornus canadensis, the Canadian dogwood! This plant is a real quick-draw, with flowers that fling their pollen when triggered by a visiting bug! At 24,000 meters per second, squared, it’s one of the fastest plant motions in the world! I was well past pollen-flinging season, though, and while I later found out that these berries are technically edible, they’re not supposed to be tasty. I kept strolling.
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I found another opening in the trees and looked out on the pristine waters of Lake Superior once more. The sun sure was painting a beautiful picture on the rocks just underneath the surface, and I would have loved to get out there for a swim! Only, I had a destination and a time limit, so I had to press on.
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In total, the trail to the Grace Creek Overlook was only 1.8 miles each way, not a colossal trek by any means, and for that reason, it was the go-to for most of my fellow passengers. Only two aboard the Sea Hunter III had come here to camp overnight, which I was quickly realizing, mosquitoes aside, would have been a much better way to pass a day, or two.
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The last bit was a gently sloping uphill trek through dappled light. That light made the ground drier and the plants taller, and I started to wonder if what I was seeing all around me was the prickly, painful devil’s club or something maybe just a little bit sweeter…
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I was in luck! The entire trail was lined with sweet, tangy thimbleberries! These relatives of raspberries are very much not prickly at all, and because they only produce a few berries at a time, they’re not the sort of fruit you’ll find in stores! That’s why it’s best to make the most of them when you spot them in the wild, and because it’s okay to snack on berries in a national park, so long as you leave some for other folks, I planned to make the most of nature’s bounty as I neared the turnaround point of my hike!
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Suddenly, I burst out onto the Grace Creek Overlook! As soon as I did, the mosquitoes all disappeared, and so did the trees! Whew! Today ended up being a scorcher, even in the middle of a lake! I looked longingly down the trail toward Feldtman Lake, but it would have taken at least another half an hour to get to this lake within a lake. I was already pushing it.
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But beyond was a clear view of the seemingly boundless horizon of Lake Superior! Everything up here feels so enormous. This is just an island in a lake, but it’s a 46-mile long island in a lake that’s so huge, it feels like an ocean! Being here really puts a beaver in his place, at least in space, if not in time. And speaking of time, the time has come to hustle on back to the boat! It really didn’t feel like much time at all, but I guess there are lots of factors to consider in transporting folks across an unpredictable lake. This group lucked out tremendously, with no wind and waves. Still, it would have been nice to get a few more hours or a kayak out to Beaver Island!
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After sharing some snacks with my fellow passengers back at the dock, and listening to a ranger present on how this became a national park, it was time to return to the mainland once more. I’d barely had a thimbleberry’s worth of a taste of this national park. Really, the best way to experience the island would have been to camp overnight, but all ferries back to the mainland were full up for the rest of the year. We detoured at the Rock of Ages lighthouse, which dates back to 1908! A crew of four lived here, inside this ten-level lighthouse, on a fifty-foot by two hundred-foot outcropping of rock, all the way until 1977 when it made the transition to automation!
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The boat returned to the mainland with tons of daylight left. Frankly, I couldn’t figure out what else to do in Grand Portage apart from tomorrow’s adventure, which is right back here. So, I stopped for dinner in Grand Marais and headed back to my hotel to watch the Olympics and rest up. Tomorrow, I’m right back here in Grand Portage for another national park adventure, this time, my longest park hike yet!
Isle see you at the trailhead!
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Total Ground Covered: 332.1 mi (534.5 km) |
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