Isle Royale

Isle Royale National Park is the least visited of all national parks.    A 22 mile, or 1.5 hour trip by ferry will deliver you to the dock at Isle Royale. The larger island surrounded by 450 smaller islands. Once disembarking from the ferry you are required to listen to a ranger talk for day visitors or backpackers.  Most people who visit Isle Royale on average stay for 3 days by backpacking and camping.  Most people visiting Yellowstone stay for 4 hours. It is wild and untamed.  The park is only opened for 6 months to people.  The permanent residents are the 950+ moose and 8 wolves.  There is much research here about the cycle of prey and predator.  The wolf population has significantly declined.  The lineage of the current wolf population dates back to a single female from the 1940's so the inbreeding  is really taking it's toll on the wolf population. There is serious concern that the wolf population will die out and the moose, with no predators, will destroy all the vegetation and then themselves die out.  There is much debate and research about how to handle this situation.

Our ferry ride over was cooooold!  

As a day visitor, when you get to the island, you are there for 4 hours until the ferry takes you back to Grand Portage.  Once we got to the island, we ventured off on a 3 mile hike in search of moose.  Unfortunately, our moose mission was uneventful.  Might have had something to do with the 80+ temps in the middle of the day.  We hiked through some of the thickest forest we'd ever seen.  We hiked along a lakeside and up on the ridge but no moose.  Lots of beautiful flowers along the way.

  
We finished up with a talk from ranger Val about the study of moose bones and what researchers learn about the age, health and activities of a moose from it's bones.
Then we headed back to the mainland.  While we were on the island, temps were pretty warm and the sun was plentiful.  As we headed back across Lake Superior, the clouds really started rolling in.  This was our sky on the way back.  If we were back home in NC and had these skies, we would have been taking cover.  But we were fortunate to just have some rain and most everybody was able to stay dry.  It was an awesome sight to watch the spectacle in the sky as we cut our way through the choppy waves of Lake Superior.

Today was a quiet day.  We gave our feet a rest and spent some time at the Grand Portage National Monument.  The weather proved to be quite unpredictable today.  We ranged in temps from 48 when the rain came to 82 with the sun's return.  A common phrase here is "if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes, it will change." Or "Here on the north shore, you can experience all four seasons in one day," and we did.  We took a drive up the Gunflint Trail still in search of moose but with no luck.  We ended the day with pizza at Sven and Ole's.  Sounds kind of weird for 2 scandinavian guys to know how to make pizza but it was delicious.  I asked our server about Sven and Ole and if they were still living. There was all kinds of memorabilia and photos around that suggested they had been in business for a while.  Well, he let me in on a secret. . . Sven and Ole are really Sid and Terry, and yes, they're still living, with a very successful business here in Grand Marais.

Tomorrow we start to head home.  It has been a wonderful stay here in Minnesota.  We plan to come back.  We explored a lot of the area by foot but the way to truly appreciate all that this area has to offer is by being on the beautiful, endless Lake Superior.  Next time, we'll bring toys!

Good night everyone and thanks for following along with us~
Love to all