Isle Royale National Park

I spent the summer in Grand Rapids Michigan, but that is not what this is about.  Well, kind of, but not entirely.  Before I moved there, everyone would ask, “Why on earth would you move there?”, or “Michigan sucks”, or “You know it’s one of the most overweight states with the highest unemployment rate”.

Why must people say these things?

Maybe they should just go to Michigan and see for themselves how much it has to offer. Maybe I am glad they do not, otherwise everywhere in Michigan would end up looking like the troll side of the Mackinaw Bridge.

You do not even know what that means do you? The mitten baby. Wear it.

There is a lot to love, but I am going to share just a small piece of a place that nearly a year ago to the day I did not know even existed. Ten hours northwest of Grand Rapids, MI is the town of Houghton.  In Houghton there is a boat that they call THE RANGER III.  If you get on The Ranger III it takes approximately six hours to get to a place called Isle Royale National Park (pronounced like the Kansas City baseball team, not like the sandwich from Pulp Fiction).

If you are looking at a map, look in the northwest corner of Lake Superior.  It’s closer to Canada than it is to Michigan, but somehow Michigan got it.  Actually, that somehow involves a series of treaty’s that I will not to get into, but if you are interested. Boom, get roasted.

Capacity of the Ranger III  is 128 and it is rarely filled because Isle Royale is the least visited National Park in the United States.  That is just one of many facts about this remote island, the only island that is a National Park at that.  That is another fact for you.

Here are some others;

- Michigan contains 14 wilderness areas. Isle Royale is the largest.

- Isle Royale has the longest running large mammal predator prey study (46 years). You ask, “What does that mean?”.  You would.  In 1940 a lonely female wolf arrived to the island.  The wolves of Isle Royale  are found to be inbred, which means they all came from that one lonely wolf who somehow got knocked up.  This has led to a 50% loss of wolf population due to inbreeding.   This information is a result of that long study that I mentioned just a few sentences ago.

- It is the only known place where wolves and moose coexist without the presence of bears.

I went with two of my roommates (Jeff & Simon) and myself decided to make the trip at the end of July, into August.  The decision-making process was easy and it came about like so:

SIMON (above)

Me: “We really should plan a camping trip to Isle Royale”

Simon: ‘Oh man, I would so be in, let’s do it. We gotta do that”

Me: “Jeff, want to go to Isle Royale with Simon and I?”

Jeff: “Oh, yeah son, I want to go, I love Isle Royale.”

Me: “Have you ever even been?”

Jeff: “No”

Simon emailed me a week later with the dates that worked for him (July 28-Aug. 5th) and I booked our boat tickets.  Of course we had to leave a day early because of the amount of time it would take for us to get there. Simon made the epic drive and we stopped for pasties (not pronounced like the things strippers wear).

Do you know what a pasty is? You really need to get to Michigan…

We spent ten days  and hiked 65.4 miles, on what I would consider one of the greatest places in the Untied States.  Here are some pics (click to make larger):

Here are some stories:

On the ride up we saw a double rainbow.

The next day, our first day on the island, we saw another rainbow.

We thought at that point we were going to see rainbows every single day and decided that we could tell people, when asked ‘How was Isle Royale?”

Our reply would solely be “We saw a rainbow every day”.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

Actually, I think it does and it did.  Although we did not see a rainbow again after those first two days, we did see and experience a lot of what being in nature is all about.

We heard wolves, but saw a moose and her baby

Jeff does not like posing for pictures, so he does not pose for them by posing. Here we are towards the end of the trip. Take note of the book Simon was reading, Angela’s Ashes.  He would laugh out loud when reading it and then share parts of it with us.  For the most part we all wore the same clothes for the full ten days