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Isle Royale National Park

An aerial view of Belle Harbor, Isle Royale National Park / NPS file

If you truly want to get away from it all without having to travel out of the Lower 48, then you might want to consider visiting Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, with an annual visitation number just below 30,000. Per park staff, it’s “rugged, remote, and far from connected communities.” You can’t drive there. The only way to access this park is by ferry, private boat, or seaplane.

Isle Royale National Park is not relegated to a single island, instead encompassing an archipelago on Lake Superior containing the main island (Isle Royale) and 400 smaller islands. This remoteness means it’s a haven for the 18 mammal species which crossed Lake Superior to get there. Visit this national park and you might see fox, moose, or even wolves. You’ll definitely see one or more of the over 200 species of birdlife, from Canada goose, to common merganser, to loon, to maybe even a rare, native Cooper’s hawk.

This national park was made for boating, kayaking, and canoeing over the waters of Isle Royale’s lakes, bays, and islands, either with your own boat or a rental. Paddle to a campsite and pitch a tent beneath the starry sky. In addition to boating and paddling, other water-based activities include swimming, scuba diving around some of the best-preserved shipwreck sites in the world, and dropping a line in the waters and reeling out lake trout, brook trout, lake whitefish, northern pike, yellow perch, or walleye.

With 165 miles (265.5 km) of trails, you can take a day hike from one to 10 miles (1.62 – 16.2 km) or a multi-day backpack adventure of 30 – 40 miles (48.3 – 64.4 km) in the park. You’ll be rewarded with scenic views of Lake Superior, inland forests, views north to Canada, and even an inland sea arch.

Visit the park during the early season to feast your eyes upon the colors of 600 flowering plant species including skunk cabbage, marsh marigolds, and delicate calypso orchids. While wending your way between white spruce and balsam fir, cast your gaze to the ground and its carpet of 30 fern species. Mosses such as sphagnum, ostrich plume, and umbrella blanket the forest floor and just about everywhere else, from ridge top to shoreline. Topping off this lush vegetative habitat are 600 species of lichen growing side-by-side with mosses. You’ll see bright orange splatters on bare rock and green bearded tufts hanging from tree branches.

In 1980, Isle Royale National Park was established as an International Biosphere Reserve offering unique opportunities to research the environment and its wildlife (e.g. long-term wolf/moose predator/prey studies) with limited human influence. Beneath the water, this area contains the most productive native fishery and genetically diverse trout populations in Lake Superior.

This remote national park has its share of history, from the Anishinaabe who paddled the waters of Minong – the aboriginal name for Isle Royale – to hunt and fish, to the establishment of commercial fisheries, to copper mining, to logging, to tourism. There’s plenty of maritime history associated with the park too, including four unmanned and automated lighthouses registered on the National Register of Historic Places. Once beacons lighting major shipping lanes, you can still visit three of the four lighthouses tending watch over 10 major shipwrecks in addition to smaller water vessels spanning 70 years of Great Lakes maritime transportation.

You can explore the forest and coastal nooks and crannies of Isle Royale on your own, partake of a ranger-led tour of the park’s natural and cultural history, or embark on a guided tour aboard the MV Sandy or the Ranger III.

While many units of the National Park System are open year-round, Isle Royale National Park is closed from November 1 through April 15, annually. While open, the park offers several campgrounds around the island from which to create your basecamp, or you can overnight in one of Rock Harbor Lodge’s 60 Lakeside Lodge rooms along the shore of Lake Superior, 20 Housekeeping Cabins on the shores of Tobin Harbor, or two rustic, one-room cabins on Washington Harbor (aka the Windigo Camping Cabins) at the southwest end of the island.

A visit to this national park takes a bit more planning and preparation, but the trip is worth it and the pages below should help you with your travel checklist and itinerary.

Traveler’s Choice For: paddling, scuba diving, lighthouses, hiking

Boating And Paddling At Isle Royale

Isle Royale National Park in Michigan is a boater and paddler’s paradise, with inland lakes as well as bays and islands to explore while boating or paddling Lake Superior. Don’t have a boat, kayak or canoe but still want to experience the park from the perspective of floating on water? No problem. You can rent a boat at the Rock Harbor Marina or the Washington Harbor Marina.
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Isle Royale Wildlife

The shortest distance between the mainland and Isle Royale National Park in Michigan is about 14 miles (22.5 km). Despite that separation between land masses by the waters of Lake Superior, this national park is not without its share of wildlife. Some animals swam to the island, while others flew, and still others may have walked over on iced portions of the lake during winter.
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A Park Different: Isle Royale

With the arrival of summer, the national parks begin to fill with RVs, minivans, SUVs, and tour buses. Fifty years ago, Americans in their wood-paneled station wagons might linger in a national park for a week or two, but today many visitors try to tag as many parks as possible on their too-short vacations. Except at Isle Royale, that is.
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