Isle Royale can be reached by ferry service from any of three places. The ferry from Grand Portage, MN, goes to Windigo on the western end of the island (35 km, 3 hours); that from Copper Harbor, MI, goes to Rock Harbor close to the eastern end of the island (90 km, 4.5 hours); and that from Houghton, MI, also goes to Rock Harbor (118 km, 6.5 hours).

Isle Royale National Park is comprised of the big island itself, all the water 4.5 miles offshore, and all the many smaller islands within that expanse. The main island is about 70 km long from east to west, and about 10 km wide for most of its length.

The island is home to moose and wolf. Both populations have fluctuated a lot over the years, the wolf being generally dependent on the moose and therefore to some degree growing and shrinking in response to increase or decrease in the number of moose. At the time of this trip, an estimated 750 moose lived on the island, and about 24 wolves in three packs (the West, the Middle, and the East Packs). On our trip we saw neither moose nor wolf, although we saw abundant tracks of both. We did see otters, a bald eagle, two different kinds of woodpecker (one either piliated or ivory-billed, a monster with a scarlet head almost the size of a wild turkey), serpents, and more. We also found and ate raspberries, blueberries, and sweet beach peas.

Isle Royale is claimed to be, at least in some years, the United States' least visited national park.

Route Information
Having taken the ferry from Grand Portage, MN, we started our trip at Windigo at the western end of the island. On Day 1 we paddled south from Windigo to our campsite for the night in Rainbow Cove, stopping where the sandy beach was at its widest, a distance of some 15 km (excluding frolics and detours).

Day 2 we spent the morning and early afternoon hiking to Feldtmann Lake, exploring that area, and then going past it up to the highlands of Feldtmann Ridge (maybe 11 km all told). In the late afternoon we pressed on in the same circumnavigatory direction as the day before, first south and then east, to a stretch of beach between The Head and Long Point; about 7 km.

Day 3 we covered some serious distance, retracing our route of the first two days back to Washington Harbor (at the end of which lies Windigo) and past it to Agate Beach, before heading back and exploring every cove for suitable camping until we settled on one a couple of kilometers further back: a total distance, excluding extensive frolicking and detouring to explore every inlet and every island, of 22 km.

On Day 4 we returned to Windigo, covering about 9 km. We just had time for a brief hike along part of the Greenstone Trail and back, and then we caught the ferry back to Grand Portage.

Trip Information
We were four on the trip: Eric, Jocelyn, Carl, and myself. Carl and I had driven fourteen hours from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Grand Marais, Minnesota, taking the slightly longer, northern route through Ontario to skirt Lake Superior. There we met Eric and Jocelyn, who had scored a lucky campsite earlier in the day in Cascade River State Park. After a night in the park we rented our pair of doubles -- real beauties -- from the good people at Cascade Kayak Rentals, drove them to the ferry in Grand Portage, and were under way by 9 a.m.

Day 1. Backcountry permits on Isle Royale are fairly relaxed, especially when they know you're on a paddling trip; allowances are made for weather- or water-related changes of plan. So it was that we set out the first day from Windigo with the general goal of reaching Rainbow Cove, but intending to keep our eyes open for gorgeous camping spots anywhere along the way, including the shelters at Grace Island.

We had not even left Washington Harbor before our first stop for a swimming break. Lake Superior is reputed, among other things, to be horrifyingly cold at all times of the year, subject to upwellings of deep water perilously close to the freezing point. In my limited experience -- two kayaking trips -- in the late summer the water is balmy. We splashed about like escaped lunatics in paradise, putting on a display for the gaping tourists filming us from a departing ferry.

It was somewhere around Middle Point that Carl spotted an object -- or formation, or arrangement -- onshore, which we were forced to investigate more closely. The... I will say phenomenon proved too obviously sacred to be photographed, or even to permit detailed description here. It was something that could not have occurred naturally; neither was it possible that it was brought about by the agency of man. A sort of Ojibwe equivalent to Stonehenge or Carnac, it gave me a violent fit of the shivers before I scampered back to the kayak, hoping that I had not presumed too far against the spirits of the place merely by disembarking to gawk like a simpleton.

When we arrived at Rainbow Cove, one of the first sights to greet us was two sets of paw prints: those of an adult wolf and those of a cub. The adult's tracks were dead straight, in the middle of the beach, following the contour of the island. There was a moose trail which also followed the contour of the island just above the beach, at about the level of the treeline. As the trip continued, we were to find these same prints and moose trail everywhere we went where there was beach, as far south and east as Long Point, as far north as Card Point.

A thick fog rolled in that first night. I went out on one of the kayaks to filter water, and within seconds of leaving shore it was like being in my own tiny universe. The world had been reduced to a tiny misty sphere around my kayak; all else was cool, grey nothing. As always in a kayak in the silent night, I had the strong sensation of being a tiny creature on the body of a great sleeping beast, the rise and fall of the water like slow, heavy breathing.

Day 2. In the morning the fog was still there, thick as cotton wool. A perfect fogbow hovering over our cove, however, indicated bright sun above. Indeed, although the fog lay heavy on the water it hardly penetrated inland at all.

We spent the morning hiking the inland trails, very occasionally leaving the path when we could be certain that a chain of connected logs or a moose-path would enable us to cover ground without forcing us to tread on any of the delicate little plants and fungi that made up the swampy forest ecosystem, for almost nothing growing in the lowlands of the island would tolerate well the crushing weight of booted or sandaled human feet. It was all toadstools, spiderwebs and leprechauns in the interior, fantastic and eerie. We thrilled with the privilege of being there, but at the same time felt as though we were in a faerie realm not meant for human kind, an unbalancing presence that the spirits of the island found intrusive and not entirely welcome.

On the way back to our camp and kayaks, as we walked along the beach, we noticed for the first time that most of the bushes at the treeline were heavy with ripe raspberries. We were gorging on those when we noticed the sweet beach peas growing on smaller plants interspersed among the raspberry bushes. We ate a number of those, and then plucked a couple of dozen pods to supplement our dinner that night. Schmeckt, schmeckt, schmeckt!

That afternoon we didn't travel far, covering only about 7 km to reach the beach on which we camped for the night, between The Head and Long Point. Our chosen spot had also been chosen some days before by the wolves; every inch of sand had its pawprint.

Day 3. The third day dawned with a thick fog again lying heavy on the water. This time the fog lingered for much of the day, so that we covered almost all of the distance traveled the two previous days in near total ignorance of the location of the shore. When finally and suddenly the mists lifted, a glorious sunshine found us already past Cumberland Point, having covered nearly 10 km. We made immediately for Washington Island, the biggest of the islands at the mouth of Washington Harbor, and stopped for a break on one of its beautiful beaches.

The water was absolutely crystal clear, and the sun hung at just the right level in the sky for every little ripple to send its own rainbow of refracted light skittering down into the depths. I waded out into it, then stood on a rock out in the water and gazed at it entranced before diving and staying under as long as I could. When I came up, Carl cast a skull-sized rock into the water near me; in the water thrown outward by the splash, a prismatic explosion of refracted light was clearly visible. I dove again, and came up with the sun directly behind my head. When I exhaled, the spray from my whiskers blew out with my breath, and the sunlight behind me caught it, so that I was blowing out a rainbow. I could not speak, I could only laugh aloud. I dove again and did it again, laughing, half-crazed with wonder. The others thought me fully mad, until Eric saw what I was doing and tried it himself; he too could only laugh and do it again. We had found a favored haunt of the rainbow goddess, and she had given us miraculous welcome.

From there we skirted our way between Washington and Grace Islands, and then between Royale and Thompson Island. Between Thompson and Isle Royale is the site of the 1928 shipwreck of the America, and her old hull is still plainly visible from the surface through the clear water.

The northernmost point we reached that day was Agate Beach. The beach was indeed covered with agates, glowing luminous where polished by the action of the tides, but unfortunately offered no feasible camping. Weary by then, we turned back seeking a good spot for the night. This we found a few small coves to the south; indeed, this was the first site we had seen where it would be possible to camp off the beach without treading on something more delicate than grasses or moss. Here we hiked to a high point, snacked lightly on the blueberries we inevitably found there, and pitched our tents on mossy rock. We sat on a high rock wall and watched the sunset, entertained equally by the burning red of the western sky and the antics of the family of otters messing about in the cove beneath us.

Day 4. Our last day we covered the short distance through well-traveled Washington Harbor, cutting happily across the wakes reluctantly left by large powerboats needlessly fearful of swamping us, and watching the seaplane come in for a landing almost right over our heads. We managed a quick power-hike up to the highlands accessible along the Greenstone Trail before our ferry carried us back.

It is worth noting that this was a very full trip, four amazing days, and yet we hardly scratched the surface of what even the western tenth of the island had to offer a summertime visitor. The inland itself is worth thorough exploration, and moose are an inevitable sight to those remaining long in the interior. Furthermore, the cooler months make Isle Royale an entirely different park, and hearing or even seeing wolf is much more likely in the winter: much still remains to be discovered.

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