Visiting Isle Royale by Captain Ben Kilpela

Three Queens Published

2011-07-07T13:50:00.000-07:00

Did you hear? My new book is out and available by phone from the Harborside Gift Shop on the dock in Copper Harbor. Commemorating the 40th anniversary of my parents' purchase of the Isle Royale Queen II, the book is entitled Three Queens: 1971 and the Kilpela Years at the Gateway to Isle Royale. It's an account, from my perspective (I was 15 at the time and served as a deckhand), of how my folks came to buy the Queen II and of the first summer they owned and sailed her on the run from Copper Harbor to Isle Royale National Park. In addition, the book tells the history of the boats that have run from Copper Harbor to the island and a brief run-through of our 40 years at the "Gateway to Isle Royale" (Copper Harbor, that is).

The book is much more than a simple laying out of facts. I wrote it as a story, a delightful tale of perseverance and success, with lots of touches of both comedy and sentiment. At the back, I have included reflections from both of my parents, Don and Betty, and even all five of my siblings -- Captain Don, Sue, Jo, Lisa, and Captain John -- on 1971 and what owning the ferry service has meant to each of them. Each reflection is a treat in itself, seven fitting capstones to the engaging tale of our family's history in the Copper Country and on Lake Superior. (Cost: $11.95. $15 by phone order, with shipping and tax included. Call 906-289-4437 to order by phone.) The photo is of the Queen II in 1971, when she was painted yellow.

Here are shots of the Queen III and Queen IV:

Welcome

2010-09-01T16:25:00.000-07:00

WELCOME to Captain Ben Kilpela's blog about Isle Royale National Park.

This is my welcome post, which is always the first or second post on this blog. In the right column, beneath the blog archive list, is an overview of Isle Royale that I wrote for copperharbor.org. Copper Harbor, Michigan, is the village from which the Isle Royale Queen IV, the Kilpela family's passenger ferry, sails nearly every day in summer and a couple times a week in May and September.

The photo is a shot of the Queen IV at Isle Royale. There are dozens of my photos on this blog. I hope you find them enjoyable and beneficial. I have begun putting most of my current photo work on our Facebook site at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Copper-Harbor-MI/Isle-Royale-Queen/109256601096#!/pages/Copper-Harbor-MI/Isle-Royale-Queen/109256601096

Captain Ben

A September Visit to Isle Royale

2009-09-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful (though worrisomely dry) September it was across the Great lakes and up on Isle Royale. Things, of course, changed a lot mid- to late-fall. There were several storms and rain and lots of wind and wave on Lake Superior. In this post I want to alert my readers to some superb posts on another blog, Black Coffee at Sunrise, which is written by a Michiganian named Nina. This fall she put put up many excellent photos and lots of excellent commentary about her recent visit to IR. There is even a shot of wolves that she and her friend ran across on the Indian Portage Trail far in the interior of the IR wilderness. Nina was a little hard on our boat, perhaps, but opinions are opinions, and we appreciate her business sailing out of Copper Harbor on the Kilpela family's ferry. I have thoroughly enjoyed the hiking adventures of Nina and her pal named Craig. Here's the blog address so you can get an enlightening look at an Isle Royale backpacking trip. Thanks, Nina.

http://nasunto.blogspot.com/

A Tree Finds a Home

2009-08-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting story -- being told on this sea stack that stands outside Rock Harbor along Laurel Lei Lane, the long, narrow cove that runs from Smithwick Island to Mott Island, which are Rock Harbor barrier islands. The stack is about 15 feet high. Notice the mountain ash tree, in bloom, which has found a place to take root and to flourish along a slight crack and slight incline on this nearly verticle mound of rock that faces Lake Superior. Moose love mountauin ash, but I believe this tree is safe from their browsing. I really enjoy finding these stories in the island forests and along the lake shore.

Dock in Tobin Harbor

2009-08-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Tobin Harbor, the Hidden Lake dock. This is the trailhead for the hike past Hidden Lake and Monument Rock up over the Greenstone Ridge to Lookout Louise, a popular and beautiful overlook of the northeast end of Isle Royale. It was a gorgeous day to be out in a boat on Tobin, which is a great place to canoe and kayak. I was hoping on the off chance to see a moose at the Hidden Lake salt lick, but I had no luck this day. The weather suddenly turned rather hot for mid-August over the past week, but temps have sunk back to normal levels in the past day or two. It was just a brief spell of true summer up here in the north country, and it looks to be all we're going to get, even though this has been a passably nice, if cool, summer, all in all.

Birches and Mists

2009-08-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

Before it got warm and summery this past week, the second of August, we were going through a strangely cool summer (strange for the 1990s and 2000s, that is). Here's a bit of an artsy shot of Bat Island from Raspberry Island. The day I took the photo was a very cool day for late July, but I had a wonderful boat ride out to Raspberry Island and a nice hike exploring along the shore of this great island, where I came across a number of beautiful scenes in the moderately foggy conditions on an Isle Royale summer afternoon. We certainly have had few days like this in the past decade of summers up here on Lake Superior. A different kind of summer -- that suddenly changed to the more common kind of summer on about August 5th.

Loons at Work

2009-07-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

The weather has been a bit up and down lately up here on the shores of Lake Superior. It's very interesting that on the days Copper Harbor has been so bad, almost miserable, Isle Royale has had fairly decent conditions, if a little drippy. It looks as though the cool and wet weather will continue for another week, though we are having a very nice day here and there, such as today, Tuesday, 7/8, which is quite nice here on the Superior coast, if still cool and breezy. Here's a photo from a drizzly walk along Tobin Harbor a few days ago. On this day, Copper Harbor was raw and very cold, with temps in the low 50s and a biting north wind. But on IR it was much nicer. When I walked out onto the shore of Tobin on this day of north winds, it wasn't all that bad -- and there was little rain. Good fishing weather, I suppose, for there close to me in a little cove were one of the pairs of loons that live in Tobin and Rock Harbors.

Bat Island and Fog

2009-07-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

I got out to Bat Island the other day. It's almost directly across Rock Harbor from the Rock Harbor Lodge. Fog, which has this June been much more frequent than at any time in the past several years, was rolling in and out all day along Rock Harbor, and open Lake Superior was fogged in tight throughout the day. This is a photo of Bat Island's outside coast, facing the open lake. That is dense fog hugging the shore in the distance of the photo, though you can hardly see that it's there. It's the absence of the horizon that indicates the fog's presence in this particular shot. Notice the scoured shoreline, which Lake Superior batters year-round, leaving little room for anything to grow on the bedrock of this part of Bat Island. This island faces southeast as well, which means that it gets the full brunt of the lake's fierce fall storms that blow first from the southeast before they switch to the northwest. Bat Island is next door to famed Raspberry Island, which has a well-known trail that many people visit throughout the summer. Bat is one of those remote and beautiful places that a person can get to only by canoe or kayak. On this day, I also saw but failed to phorograph the Bat Island bald eagle that I have seen dozens of times over the past 10 years or so. My friendly but skittish bird flew over me at about 25 feet when I surprised him as I crossed the island from the harbor side to the lake side. He ften appears to be fishing the reefs right off Bat.

A Local Moose Family

2009-06-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

I found that moose family. My luck is changing -- or at least it changed for one day. Right where my brother Captain Don had seen a moose cow and her twins several days before, I saw the same family. This was down the Scoville Point Trail on the Rock Harbor side. There are a number of small swamps and wet spots along the trail, and one of these about 3/4s of a mile northeast of the Rock Harbor Lodge has a wide moose trail alongside the swamp. The moose were nervous, but I stood and took photos from about 40 feet away for some minutes. Then they moved off up the moose trail. I tried to follow at about 50 feet, but the mother led me deep into a mossy swamp that was very wet with recent rains. My pants were quickly soaked, though my feet were dry. I couldn't keep up and had to abandon the chase. I'll be checking back over the next month and keeping my eyes peeled.

Fish Frying In the Pan

2009-06-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Here's something a little different. This is a shot of a filet of Isle Royale lake trout in the frying pan back home in Copper Harbor. This delicious -- unbelievably fresh and delicious -- pink beauty was caught by my brother, Captain John Kilpela. He fished just outside Rock Harbor last week, fairly closer to the Rock Harbor Lodge, and caught a three-pounder. He kept one filet and gave the other to my wife Marsha and me. We split it with my son Logan and had a great meal (son Drew doesn't favor fish). John doesn't like frying fish, but I think trout is just superb just about any way you can get them cooked, though I prefer breaded and deep-fried. I've been hearing on the island that the trout are coming very close to shore and are being caught in very shallow waters, especially for this time of summer, when the Lake is beginning, at last, to warm up a bit. The water is still very cold, of course. The nearshore temperatures are only 45 degrees or so, but that's cold for mid-June. Though spring is very late, we have had a great week of weather this past week. The long-range forecast looks great as well.

A Hunt for Moose

2009-06-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

My brother, Captain Don, told me on Monday that he had seen a cow moose and two newborn calves, twins clearly, on the Scoville Point Trail on Monday afternoon while he was at the island on the Queen IV's regular run. On Tuesday, I served as captain on the run and went down toward Scoville Point to check out the many swamps along the way to see whether I could find those three moose. I criss-crossed several the the swamps down that way, a mile or so east of the Rock Harbor Lodge and marina, where the Queen IV docks. I went up the ridge toward Tobin Harbor, back down again toward Rock Harbor through the wetlands. The photo is of what it looks like to cross a swamp on Isle Royale. What you can't quite see is all the water lying beneath the grass and other vegetation. The trees, wickedly tangled as they are, are tag alders, typical of north-country swamps. The forest floor is covered with old blown-down trees which are now rotting and covered in moss and grasses and other sundry plants. It's hard work crossing these swamps, but the moose do it all the time. You can find their soggy, beaten trails throughout these areas. I saw lots of tracks, large and small (those young moose, presumably), but I had no luck finding the family of moose Don saw, which you might have guessed since I didn't post a photo of them. One has to have time and patience to see wildlife out at the island. Luck, too. Alas, I am pretty unlucky when it comes to moose hunting. But, wouldn't you know, two elderly ladies on a stroll saw a couple moose down the Rock Harbor Trail on the same afternoon.

Orchid In a Meadow

2009-06-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

During my first hike in the springtime this year at Isle Royale (last week, because spring comes so much later on the island than on the MI mainland), I ran across a patch of calypso orchids on the Tobin Harbor Trail down near Scoville Point. These little flowers can be difficult to find, but the vegetation is still low, making it easier to find them -- if the flowers have come out at all, that is. These are a little early for the late conditions on IR, but there they were, in full bloom. The blooms are very small, perhaps no more than an inch across, but they are very pretty. I laid down in a soggy meadow near the trail to get this shot of one of the orchiods in a small group that contained about 8 of the small flowers. Of course, wildflower season is one of the best reasons to take your trip to IR in June rather than later in the summer.

Aspens in Bloom

2009-06-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

Lots of people love aspens in the fall., mostly for those gorgeous yellows that the aspen leaves turn, making such wonderfully golden photographs. But I like aspens a lot in the spring, too, a time that few people seem to focus on or notice. Isle Royale has a lot of aspens, especially on the rugged northeast end, and their new leaves turn a bright shade of light green in the spring. It's spring right now on the island, and so a lot of the ridges on the northeast end of the island are covered in spring aspens, like the one in the photograph, which I shot down near Scoville Point a couple days back. Wow, was it chilly out there along the lakeshore, even with the sun out. But that, of course, makes for great backpacking conditions.

Spring

2009-06-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

I made my first trip out to Isle Royale this week. It is mid-spring out on the island right now, very different conditions from what most people expect to find at this time of year. It feels like summer across the Midwest (well, maybe not this year, what with May being so cool), but I would guess that the island is at least 2 weeks behind conditions on the Keweenaw Peninsula, which is 2 weeks or so behind the rest of the state. Here is a shot of a meadow on the Tobin Harbor Trail. You can see that the vegetation is just coming up. This meadow will be dense with tall and short plants of all sorts, including the 3-4 foot high thimbleberry plants that are just coming up in the foreground. In 2 weeks or so, this meadow will look very different. More shots of spring coming in the next couple days.

Spring at Starvation Point

2009-05-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

Rock Harbor on a spring day, a couple years back, to be honest. As many know, I am still downstate working at my MSU job until next week. The Queen IV has made several trips to the island already. A cousin of a friend from Cadillac, MI, told my friend that he took his son to IR for a backpacking trip in honor of his son's buddy's graduation from Michigan Tech (or something like that). I am waiting to hear what kind of time they had. Starvation Point, where this photo was taken, is about 4 miles southwest down Rock Harbor from the main dock, where the Visitors Center and the Rock Harbor Lodge are, the main developed area of the park. The RH Trail trail cuts very close to the point, but curls inland just before it. The photo is looking up Rock Harbor to the northeast. That's Mott Island on the right hand side of the photo. Three Mile campground is about a mile up the coast on the left. Can't wait for my first trip to the island. I'll be posting photos from this year soon.

39th Season Opens

2009-05-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

The 2009 season of the Isle Royale Queen IV began today with our usual 8 a.m. departure for Isle Royale from Copper Harbor, Michigan. This will be the 39th season that the Kilpela family has operated the service to the island from the tip of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, the state's closest point of land to Isle Royale. We kept our fare increase low again this year, and we have no plans for any fuel surcharges for now. We have kept our parking charge the same for many years as well, even though we have much higher parking costs. It's a great time to be on Isle Royale. Those long days, beautifully sunny afternoons, the cool nights, the intensely starry skies -- boy, would I love to make a trip right now. This photo was taken by my father, Captain Don Kilpela, Sr., this morning as the Queen IV was getting underway on a fine May day on Lake Superior. We sail two times a week this time of year, Mondays and Fridays.

Seeing Rain from Mount Franklin

2008-11-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

A great Isle Royale hike is the one up to Mount Franklin on the Greenstone Ridge, as I have mentioned on this blog before. The view at the overlook is superb in just about any conditions. The July night that my son Logan and I hiked up there (Logan is pictured), it was after 9:00 when we reached the overlook. Rain was approaching, we could feel and see (when we got to Franklin). The forecast was bad, and we had felt some light rain drops on the way up the ridge. We took a chance to hike up to Franklin without rain gear, but I was confident that we would be fine. The only important matter was keeping the camera dry. The shot shows that even on a cloudy, somewhat dreary night, the view can still be very nice. There were showers in the distance, but none of them came our way until the middle of the night. We ended up having a very nice time on the hike and during our stay on Franklin that night. It was almost fully dark when we got back to Three Mile campground and started getting our beds ready. Light lasts a long, long time on Isle Royale in July, even with heavy cloud-cover.

A Small But Solid Evergreen

2008-10-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Out on Raspberry Island in Rock Harbor I made a fascinating discovery one day this past summer. That little dead tree in the foreground of the photo is about 3 feet tall and has been encrusted in lichens probably over many, many years. Somehow this little spruce or fir (I'm not sure which) has hung on in death, standing fairly straight and strong, despite the wind and wave and snow and ice that the northeast end of Raspberry is exposed to all year long. The tree is a little gem on one of the most rugged shores of the national park. It stands on a mound of solid rock about 10 feet above the surface of Lake Superior and only about 5 to 10 feet from the edge of the mound above the channel between Raspberry and Bat Island. How long can it last standing there? I'll be checking in on this little snag from to time to time.

Tall Aspens

2008-10-02T14:05:00.000-07:00

A favorite spot of mine on the island is about half way up the trail to Mount Franklin from the Rock Harbor Trail. The trail there passes through some very tall and now very old big-tooth aspens (old for aspens, which do not last long) on the side of one of the ridges you pass over on your way up to the escarpment. This forest has changed very slowly, but noticeably, over the many years since I was a teenager making my first treks through the interior of Isle Royale. The aspens are so much taller and stouter now than they were back 35 years ago or so. I love the spot now even more than when I was a kid. My son Logan took the photo in the very dim light (he shook the camera a little bit). Rain threatened al during our hike up to the mountain very late in the evening in July. Aspens are somewhat wimpy trees. They don't live long and are easily blown down (as trees go). This forest has lasted long because of the common shelter the aspens themselves provide each other and because this forest is on the south side of the ridge, which means it has a bit more protection from the strongest fall and winter winds. The storms come out of the west and northwest and even the north at the most turbulent times of year. But every time I visit this neck of the IR woods, I find one or two more trees fallen or blown down. Slowly, ever so slowly, things keep changing. I hope you enjoyed this shot. I know I tend to emphasize the coastline of the island in my photography, but this photo was taken in the interior a good mile from any coast (as the crow flies).

Scoville Point on a Gorgeous Summer Day

2008-09-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

I took a nephew from Housdton, Texas, out to the island for an afternoon visit in midsummer, on a day when I was captain of the Queen IV. Brian had never been this far north on the North American continent, and so it was all new to him, to be in the north country and so far out on Lake Superior. We had a good day tooling around Rock Harbor as I showed him some of the many sights. At the end of our time toruing in my runabout, we visited Scoville Point, where Brian and I walked up and down the rocky slopes and explored Scoville's endless nooks and crannies. This is a shot of my Texan nephew walking along one of the ridges that make up Scoville Point, one of the most beautiful places in Isle Royale National Park. This area is an easy hike from the Rock Harbor Lodge and for backpackers as well. Also, moose are frequently seen along the trail leading to the point.

On Conglomerate's Cliffs

2008-08-11T11:50:00.000-07:00

My son Drew, now 12 years old, and my wife Marsha up on the cliffs on the north side of Conglomerate Bay near Rock Harbor, Isle Royale. This is one of the places we visited during our family trip to the island a couple weeks back. What a calm day it was, as you can see in the distance, open Lake Superior as flat as the bottom of the frying pan. It was warm, too -- a perfect day for exploring the wilderness along the cliffs and coves and forests of Isle Royale. Conglomerate Bay is inaccessible by trail and has no campground, even in the general vicinity. So it is seldom visited except by canoeists and kayakers. That makes it a special spot for water travelers in the national park. There is little conglomerate rock in the bay, however. That kind of rock is found west of Point Houghton on the south shore of the island and on the Keweenaw Peninsula far across the Big Lake. The bedrock Drew and Marsh are standing on is basalt, ancient lava flows about one billion years old, which make up the heart of Isle Royale's geological form.

Dinner at a Shelter

2008-08-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Three Mile Camp and one of the Adirondack shelters found in many campgrounds across Isle Royale. That's my wife Marsha and my eldest son Logan, now 15, getting dinner ready during our night at the island a couple weeks back. The rain was threatening, as I have written of my family's visit earlier on my blog, but we ate without much trouble, except for the ever-circling skeeters. It finally rained overnight while we were snug in our sleeping bags in the shelter. Three Mile is a busy campgound, since it's only 3 miles from the main entry to Isle Royale, at Rock Harbor, where the Queen IV docks each day. But it's a very nice campground, situated right on the shores of gorgeous Rock Harbor. It has beautiful camp sites and shelters. We had a great night there, listening to loons calling and raindrops falling.

In the Dogdays of Summer the Wolves Attack

2008-07-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

There have been big doings this week on the island, in fact unprecedented. There was a wolf kill of a moose in Moskey Basin Campground on Monday night, according to reports flying about the whole island. Apparently, the wolves pursued a wounded moose into the campground, near one of the shoreline shelters there. That's never happened in my memory or in my reading. The moose went into the water, but was too far gone to save itself. After the moose died, the wolves dragged it ashore. Other wolves of the Chippewa Harbor pack then came into the camp. This was discovered by a ranger. The camp was then evacuated in order to protect both the wolves and backpackers, though I don't believe there was any immediate danger. Lots of rumors about what happened have been zooming all around the island, but it seems the situation was not quite so dramatic as the rumor-embellished stories had it. All is back to normal now, and the NPS has reopened the Moskey Basin camp as of Sunday. The photo has nothing to do with any of this, except that the wolf kill occured in good weather, the kind of July conditions that are just plain perfect, the halcyon days of summer. This photo was actually taken last year when I was canoeing along the outer islands of Rock Harbor south of Scoville Point. We've had more than a week of similar perfect days lately. I'll try to get more information on the moose attack and deliver it on to you soon.

Sea Tunnel

2008-07-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

The family made a trip over to the island for an overnight camp-out this past week. My wife Marsha and my boys, Logan and Drew, agreed to camp, which is not something Marsh has done a lot of. But she had a fine time, proof that anyone can enjoy Isle Royale. I kept telling her that my new advertsing campaign would be: "If Marsha can do it and have fun, anyone can." The skeeters were abundant and busy and aggressive, but we survived well with bug dope of sufficient strength. The night was cool, but not too bad. We camped at Three Mile in Rock Harbor. The loons were calling along Rock Harbor almost all night. That was wonderful. It rained overnight, but the rain caused us no problems. The photo is of my older son Logan, now 15, scooting through a sea tunnel on the edge of Conglomerate Bay down the coast from the Middle Island Passage entrance to Rock Harbor. There are some high cliffs on the north side of Conglomerate, and Lake Superior has carved a number into the cliffs many interesting formations. I hadn't noticed this sea cave before. It was lined with moss. Logan was trrying to go through it and then along the base of the very high cliff on the far side of the tunnel. But the water was too deep on the far side of the tunnel for him to walk in; so he had to come back through the tunnel, which was a challenge because of the moss. I gave it a try, too, but also failed to make it to the far side.

A Rain Shower Passes By

2008-07-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

We had a very bouncy crossing last Sunday, an unusual occurence for July on Lake Superior. The best marine weather is always in July, and yet gale warnings were posted and came to fruition earlier on this day I took this photo of the coast outside Rock Harbor from the Isle Royale Queen IV at a distance of about 8 miles. Those are some of the islands that form the south side of Rock Harbor in the distance. The Greenstone Ridge is lost to sight behind the brief rain shower that was passing over Middle Island Passage as the Queen IV approached the island (I was captain of the Queen on that day). The rain shower stopped just 5 minutes after I took the photo. It turned out to be another beautiful evening on Isle Royale for its visitors. The winds settled down and the rains moved on east to open Lake Superior.

Boardwalks on Isle Royale

2008-07-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken along the Rock Harbr Trail near Three Mile Campground about a week ago. A group of backpackers heading out into the backcountry for 4 or 5 days was coming down the trail toward me. I was standing on the edge of a swamp that the broadwalk bridges. You can see that the ferns in the swamp have only recently emgered -- and in late June! It is summer, but late spring would be a better description of the some of the micro-climates that are near the shores of harbors and lakes in the national park. The many boardwalks on the island are important in protecting the swampy areas of the island, which have there own partucular charms, especially concerning the varieties of flowers and plants that do best in low-lying damp areas.

An Easygoing Squirrel

2008-07-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have certainly been striking out on the big wildlife lately on the island, but our customers, the folks we transport to Isle Royale on the Isle Royale Queen IV, have reported seeing moose, both cows and calves, regularly. I just had one sighting so far this summer, and it happened so quickly that I couldn't even get a photo, as I explained in a previous post. Here's a shot of te best of my wildlife encounters so far, a placid red squirrel on the Tobin Harbor trail a few days ago. Usually, these fellows are cackling at you as soon as they see you coming up the trail toward their nests. But this little fellow was standing on a downed log just a few feet to the side of the trail and showed no anxiety or anger or any desire to get away. He was nibbling busily on a spruce nut of some sort. I left him to his business. But if you're coming to IR this summer, don't despair. From all reports, it seems that the wildlife viewing could be excellent this year. There have been a couple of wolf sightings in the Rock Harbor area as well.

A Stream Re-Emerges from the Forest

2008-06-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

There are many signs that 2008 has been better to the island with much-needed rain than 2007, which was, according to the wolf-moose researchers, the driest in many decades. Here's some evidence. The photo is a shot of the edge of the big, tangled swamp at Starvation Point, about 5 miles down Rock Harbor from the main entrance at Snug Harbor, where the Isle Royale Queen IV docks each day we sail. The little stream has not been present from a couple years in this location. But now the swamp has a lot of water in it, where it had been very dry, though damp, for years on end. I could hear water moving through the swamp all around me when I went deep into it. And then I found the little stream emptying into the harbor on the beach beside the point. A good sign for the dry island all in all. But the mosquitoes were certainly up a bit and busy trying to get me.

Shreds of Fog Tumble Up Rock Harbor

2008-06-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

I made my first trip to Isle Royale as Captain of the Isle Royale Queen IV on Friday last week. It was an endlessly interesting and beautiful day, because it changed just about 180 degrees in the afternoon. We had heavy fog patches, sea smoke, and large rollers from the southeast on the way to the island. Then conditions changed dramatically. The wind came up out of the southwest. The fog was torn apart on the 20 mile-an-hour and was pushed northeast. Suddenly it seemed, within a half hour, Rock Harbor was clear. Here's a photo of the fog rolling northeast up Rock as I walked along the Scoville Point Trail. I later saw a moose near Scoville Point, but it was a very brief glimpse. It was yearling, it appeared, and it was a little mangy already, from the wood ticks that harry the moose so relentlessly. I spooked it; so I assume that it is not yet accustomed to people after the long winter and very cool spring. I tracked it for a while along a couple of densely forested moose trails, but never got a another glimpse or a photo.

Foggy Night in Copper Harbor

2008-06-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

It has been cool on Lake Superior and all across the Midwest this spring. We've had a bit of fog on the Big Lake on our first few crossings to the island, though I would say that fog has not been as prevalent as it was in decades past. Here is a photo of my brother Captain John on the dock of the Isle Royale Queen IV in Copper Harbor as the Queen comes in from a crossing to the island in May. On nights like these the captain first has to find the dock before we can get her moored. We've taken quite a few passangers this May, and people have reported finding good hiking across the island. The Lodge is now open along with the Lodge Dining Room and Greenstone Grill.

A Wild Story Arises in Winter on Isle Royale

2008-06-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

I have finished Nevada Barr’s new murder mystery set on Isle Royale, entitled Winter Study. Now, what can I tell you about it that you might not get from the reviews at amazon.com? First, if you love Isle Royale, it’s worth reading. Barr brings the island in winter to life reasonably well, at least as winter happens on the west end, the areas around Washington Harbor and the Feldman Ridge. Her descriptions of place and setting are often not all they could be, but she has never been all that good at description anyway. Her first mystery set on the island, Superior Death, lacked in its descriptions of the island, too. Barr also makes a variety of geographic mistakes and exaggerations, though they are not so important as to be ruinous. (The photo is a satellite image of Isle Royale in later winter, 2008.) Nor does the famed scientific study of moose and wolves itself get much attention from her. Barr does a quick sketch of the moose-wolf research effort and quickly leaves its nature and purpose behind for her far-fetched plot of rape and murder. That plot is a dark, wild one, even darker and more outlandish than her first mystery set on Isle Royale. A number of readers at amazon.com have noted how violent and disturbing some of the scenes and plot elements are. Yet, though I might be getting callous, I found them standard fare for the modern murder mystery.

The story concerns the deaths of two people out of six involved in one of the recent annual winter studies of the moose and wolf populations, a research effort which has become famous worldwide. Is it as famous as Barr excitedly proclaims several times in the book? Probably not. But it’s somehow nice to delude ourselves that everyone knows about and loves Isle Royale as we who know her do, which is far from true, even in Michigan. The plot turns on the premise that the Department of Homeland Security is considering opening the park in winter for reasons of state security. The consideration of this question brings a couple of newcomers to the winter study, in addition to the wildlife biologists who conduct it annually, and puts in motion the elements of the weird and elaborate revenge-murder story.

As usual, Barr writes with her finger-snapping jauntiness. But she tries to be so witty, so hip, so knowing, that she can become tedious -- and even confusing. As typical with her work, she delves deeply into the psychology of her main character, Anna Pigeon, but, strangely, she does not portray her evil-doers or her secondary characters to any great depth. A boatload of highly implausible events take place on the island during the few days that our heroine is present. They could happen, I suppose, but you know they wouldn’t -- and the chances of all of them occurring within the space of a week are nil. But readers of murder mysteries accept outlandish events as a matter of course. Nonetheless, the book begins to read like a soap opera and actually starts to lurch headlong toward the ridiculous. Yet Barr manages to keep most of it entertaining and keep it from falling off the cliff into complete absurdity. The idea of Isle Royale being the subject of security concerns is not something I am well versed in. So I don’t know how plausible it might be that the island and the wolf-moose study could face the sort of problems that Barr imagines they might.

In sum, if you like Nevada Barr’s jaunty style and psycho-probing, you’ll surely like Winter Study, assuming you can take the dark nature of the crimes committed on and off the island. If you don’t know her work, get ready for a wild ride with a lot of intent study of Anna’s mind and moods, and of small words and gestures among the six characters. But don’t look for some sort of engaging overview of the natural world of Isle Royale in winter. Barr seems little interested in that.

2008 Season Begins

2008-05-12T14:30:00.000-07:00

The season has begun. The Isle Royale Queen IV made its first trip of 2008 this morning at 8:00. There was a period of windiness yesterday, but the nor'easter that kicked up its heels for a time settled down in the evening. This morning dawned fair and cold, with a light breeze out of the north. Waves were running only at one foot out on the open lake. A lot of people made the journey to the island on the first day this year. No doubt they'll be spreading out. This is a nice time to be on Isle Royale. It is only early spring right now. The leaves are not out; so the view through the forests is excellent. You are able to study the terrain to a great distance much better than in summer. Tonight will be very cool, I'm certain. The temperature along the lakeshore should at freezing, inland below freezing. The hiking during the day should be great, however. Some of the Lodge managers went out to the island today as well. They'll be getting ready for the opening of the Lodger in early June. Start making your plans. The photo is of one of the Lodge's very popular Housekeeping Cottages. Make your reservations for those units quickly.

By the way, I've been reading the new Nevada Barr mystery Winter Study, which is set during the winter wolf-moose study out on the island. I'll post a review shortly. I'm already hooked. The events are a little over-the-top, in the way of popular mysteries, but it's been a good read so far.

Encouraging Results from the Annual Study of Moose and Wolves

2008-04-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

The Wolves and Moose of Isle Royale annual winter study has finished, and the preliminary results have been published in the press. It was a good winter for wolves and moose, according to the Associated Press story, which I have attached as a comment to this post. Moose were up substantially, by about 40%. Wolves were up slightly. There are very few old moose left on the island nowadays, which means that the wolf population should decline -- it perhaps should have declined this past winter. But not so. You can read the blog of the research study at isleroyalewolf.org. The magazine cover on display here shows that Lake Superior featured the 50th anniversary of the study in a recent issue. There have been a number of other magazine articles published about the anniversary lately, many of which can be found on the web by using a search engine.

Nevada Barr Returns

2008-03-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about the new Isle Royale mystery that will hit bookstore shelves next week? It's Nevada Barr, returning with another book about the island. She is the author of a mystery series set in national parks around the U.S. One of her earlier novels in the series was Superior Death, which concerned Anna Pidgeon's investigation of murders on the Kamloops shipwreck on the north shore of Isle Royale. I've read that book a couple times. It wasn't bad. We still sell it at the Harborside Shop in the offices of the Queen IV. The story is rather far-fetched, but fetching things a little far is typical in mystery novels. But it isn't a bad read. I've got to admit that I found Barr's first IR book weakest in its descriptions of Isle Royale itself. The island comes off as pretty bland, in my judgment. I'm hoping for better in Winter Study, which, as you can guess, will be set during the annual winter study on the island, which is conducted by the MTU moose-wolf researchers. Reportedly, the new novel will be "heart-pounding," naturally, and "brilliantly crafted." Well, we'll see. The story will concern Anna Pidgeon pitted against a predator -- a human coward with a sadistic violent streak. I look forward to it. We'll have it on sale for sure this summer. I'll post a review soon.

Audubon Looks at Isle Royale

2008-03-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

I just heard about Audubon magazine's article about the Isle Royale moose-wolf research study, "The Long View." The occasion is the 50th anniversary of the moose-wolf study, which some have called the longest continuing study of prey and predator in the world. The article came out in the March issue and is available online. It was a good read. The article can be found at:

http://audubonmagazine.org/features0803/wildlife.html

The photo is a thumbnail of the first two pages of the article. Les Line is the author. Audubon has covered Isle Royale very well over the past 30 years or so. Line has written about moose and wolves and Isle Royale for a number of publications and knew several of the famous researchers who have led the study in its first five decades. His overview of the study during its first 50 years is brisk and enlightening. Rolf Peterson, who has retired as head of the project, gives a rather bleak outlook for moose and wolves on the island at the end of the article. I might offer another post on this article once I've had a chance to digest it. There are a number of shorter articles that commemorate the anniversary of the study on the web, by the way. You can find many of them through a search engine.

Lake Superior Water Levels Go Up

2008-03-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

Recent reports from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have made the news: Lake Superior water levels last month were 8 inches higher than they were in February of last year. According to many that's a sign the lake is beginning to rebound from its record lows of last summer, which hurt recreational boating and the Great Lakes shipping industry. The news came from Detroit District Meteorologist Keith Kompoltowicz, who said that the lake is expected to be 7 to 15 inches above last year's levels through August. The level of the lake has risen because of a very rainy fall and a winter with plenty of snow in the Lake Superior watershed. The lake remains 10 inches below normal, nonetheless. There are a couple of photos illustrating the low water levels in my 2007 Isle Royale slide show. My photo in this post is a shot from near the end of Tobin Harbor. That's Edwards island on the left in the distance. The shot shows a broad reef that has been exposed in recent years by the low lake levels. This photograph is available for sale if you like black-and-white photos, as I do, because they are often the best.

Family Time

2008-03-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

Here's a shot of Isle Royale from a long time ago, the summer of 1970 to be exact. I was 14 years old. I'm the curly blonde-headed kid standing in the middle of the crowd. We had taken the well-known hike up to Lookout Louise, which is on the Greenstone Ridge on the northeast end of the island. Nixon was president. He had recently ordered the bombing of Cambodia. Kent State had just happened, Woodstock a year before. The two families, the Ben and Eva Lassila clan of Farmington, MI, and the Don and Betty Kilpela clan of Livionia, MI (both Finnish-American families), were close friends and spent time on the island a couple times way back in the late 60s. We had great times together. The Lassilas had four kids, my parents' had six, for a total of ten. We always stayed at the Rock Harbor Lodge (in the Housekeeping Cottages) back in those days. My parents weren't much for camping, though I became a wilderness-loving guy in no time because of my exposure to Isle Royale. My folks bought the Isle Royale Queen II in 1971, just a year after this photo was taken, which is when or family's connection to the island began. Is it time to begin your own family tradition on Isle Royale? If it has already begun, send me a photo and I'll be happy to post it on this blog. It can be a great way to stay together and form lasting memories.

Rock Harbor Lodge 2008 Opening Dates

2008-01-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

We've heard from our friends at the Rock Harbor Lodge about their opening dates for the 2008 season. The Lodge will open its very popular Housekeeping Cottages on May 23. The Lodge buildings, which contain the motel-style rooms and and the Lodge Dining Room and Greenstone Grill will open on June 3. The wintertime number at the Rock Harbor Lodge is 866-644-2003. Also, you can visit the web site, which is posted in the right column of this blog. The photo is a shot of one of the decks on the four main Lodge buildings, which are located smack-dab on the shores of Rock Harbor. What a spectacular view in the morning -- any time of day, for that matter. It was just about perfect on this morning a few years ago when I snapped this shot of my wife Marsha watching the harbor and enjoying her morning cup of coffee. May and early June are superb times to be on the island, when it is actually still spring. The nights are wonderfully cool, the days gently warm. Long hikes at that time of the summer are great because you can get a deep, wide view of the terrain through the trees, which are not yet in full leaf. The Queen IV and the Lodge both offer Off-Peak rates, too, so it's cheaper to go and stay.

2008 Season Approaches

2008-01-15T10:27:00.000-08:00

Just a short note to let everyone know that we are taking reservations at the office of the Isle Royale Queen IV for passage to the island in summer, 2008. Rates have remained almost steady, with just one small increase in one category. The Queen IV keeps getting better and better as the years go by and we keep working on her. Look for more improvements in 2008. The photo is of a cove along the Scoville Point Trail on Rock Harbor that I took a few years ago. It is one of my Isle Royale notecard shots. You can always order notecards by writing me on email, and we can make some arrangement for payment. I plan on getting some kind of web ordering system for our Isle Royale merchandise some time this year.

Captain Ben

Bounding Fox

2007-12-10T13:39:00.000-08:00

My daugter Miranda Davis, of Copper Harbor, went out to the island in late September on one of the last regular seasons runs of the Isle Royale Queen IV. She and a couple friends took a day-hike on the lovely and easy trail to Lake Ritchie from Moskey Basin, a great hike in the fall. They ran across a fox on the way, and Miranda got this video of him on her digital camera. It's a very cool sht of him bounding through the woods. Of course the island is all closed up for the winter now. I haven't been posting much. There was some news about fears of the recovery of the moose population in the Detroit Free Press a couple weeks back, but I haven't had a chance to look up what the latest is or who said what. I'll try to get to that. In any case, I will try to offer some new photos from last summer as time goes on. Enjoy Miranda's fox.

Ruins

2007-10-31T13:22:00.000-07:00

There is something about ruins that is haunting, as has been observed by many artists and art critics of generations past. It might have been English art theorist John Ruskin (19th century) who first discussed the matter of the aesthetics of ruins in detail. One inevitably thinks about the passing of one's own life when looking at ruins and pondering the lives that were lived in the construction of things that have been gradually disintegrating and decaying. Such were some of thoughts I had as I was composing another shot of one of my favorite subjects on Isle Royale, the ruins of old docks and cribs. This is one such crib in Crystal Cove, on Amygdaloid Island, where the Johnson family toiled for decades at fishing the Big Lake on the north side of the island. This all took place years before Isle Royale became a national park. Now they are gone, and their docks are no longer used and have been falling into decay, and it all makes me think of the passing of my own life, as a captain and co-boat-owner, who has brought visitors to the island for decades now. And yet everything is so new in the Kilpela family business. We have a new boat, the Queen IV, and a new dock, and other new things. Looking at this ruined dock reminds me to enjoy and cherish this great life, for it too shall some day pass away and slowly become a ruin.

A Fisherman's Light

2007-10-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

I spent a morning at Crystal Cove on Amygdaloid Island on the north shore of Isle Royale late in the summer. The water was still quite low (it has since risen a great deal with all the rain that has fallen this autumn), so I took the opportunity to walk all the way around the cove. On the way, I went into one of the old storage sheds that were built by the Johnsons about a hundred years ago or so at Crystal Cove. Some of them are rotting away. Inside one, which has no roof any longer, I found this rusted lantern from days of yore. Of course, all such items are historical parts of the national park and as such owned by the people of the United States corporately and should not be removed, which would be in effect stealing. But discovering the lantern brought about some moments of reflection on the lives led by fishermen and their families decades ago on this wild, remote island. That way of life has all passed away. Crystal Cove is such a distant place, so far out in the wilds of Lake Superior, that it is bewildering to think that lives were once lived there and families prospered for a time in the northern wilderness.

The Isle Royale Leprechaun

2007-09-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

Logan, Logan, Logan. What am I going to do about you? My son Logan, now 15, has been up to his old tricks this fall, altering some of my photos of Isle Royale for fun. Last year, he made a nice alteration for the annual Isle Royale Slide Show, which you can find easily enough on this blog. In that one he added velociraptors to the Isle Royale landscape (2006 Slide Show, Photo 7). This year, he had some fun with me, portraying me as some kind of northwoods elf sitting on the blue beads of a blue-bead lily. The shot was taken somewhere in the woods down the Rock Harbor Trail at the end of summer, when the yellow flowers of this lily have become these blue beads (hence the name). Keep watching for more from Logan in the months ahead. I hear he's working on some new alterations.

Stones Neverending

2007-09-14T13:02:00.000-07:00

One thing about Isle Royale: there are always plenty of rocks and stones to pick through and study. This photo is one of me, Captain Ben Kilpela, on a little nook of a stone beach -- I'm sitting in what is a semi-seacave -- on the north side of North Government Island at the north end of Tobin Harbor up near the very northern tip of Isle Royale, which is Blake Point. My son Logan and I were out this outer island for an afternoon, just exploring, when we came across this ordinary beach, just like hundreds of others in the national park. We spent some time just studying stones. What is it about stones and rocks that so interests people like us? I'll have to think more about that, but in thinking about it that day, I did realize that I spend a lot of my time at Isle Royale doing just what is shown in this photo, picking through and studying stones. As you might not realize, Isle Royale is a geological infant, almost what a geologist would call a newborn land formation. It came out from under the stupendously gigantic, miles-thick glacier that covered the Lake Superior region just 11,000 years ago. It was nothing but a big rock when the glacier melted and pulled back and alowed it to see the light of day, in the amazing ways glaciers do. But gradually the great Lake the glacier left behind in the Superior Basin begin to gnaw loose some cracked and loose sections of the rock -- and then began to tumble those loose chunks and pieces around -- and then began to toss the smoothed chunks and pieces up into nooks and crannies all around Isle Royale, where we find them now as stone beaches of all sorts of sizes and ages and formations. The stones I'm sitting on in the photo contained very few quartz-like pieces of silica and no semi-precious stones, no agates or greenstones, that I could discern. They were almost all pieces of basalt in an infinite number of shades of gray. I found even all those similar yet subtly different shades to be fascinating, as I always do. But why? Perhaps a little more thought will reveal an explanation. Rock-houding is one of the joys of Isle Royale.

Off on a Paddling Journey

2007-09-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

Some folks were headed out across Tobin Harbor in canoes one day late in the summer. Though it looks as though rain might be in the offing from this photo, we would not see rain for a couple more weeks at the island. I am back home in southern Michigan now, but I will continue to post shots of the summer at Isle Royale over the next month or so.

The Future of Moose and Wolves on Isle Royale

2007-09-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

Did you notice that there was a major article in the Detroit Free Press in August about how global warming might hurt the moose population on Isle Royale, and thus hurt the wolf population in turn? The article is available at this link, if you missed it:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070827/NEWS06/708270367/1048/COL08

Much the same information, in briefer, also appeared in a Backpacker magazine article that came out this summer about the biggest coming changes in America's national parks. This article might have prompted the Free Press to give John Vucetich, the leader of the moose-wolf research study nowadays, a call. Isle Royale made Backpacker's list of their Top Ten for the possibility that moose might die out on the island. The island has without question been much warmer overall, and year round, over the past few years, though there have been a couple hard, cold winters as well over the past 15-20 years. This year I saw more sign than ever before of the decline in the moose over the past decade. There were wide stands of young balsam, which moose have browsed heavily, in many areas. I even found several small American yew bushes on the main island and the outer islands of Rock Harbor in places where they would be easily acccessible to moose. The yew was long ago eradicated on the main island because of moose, which favor the yew over just about anything else. Well, the yew is starting to come back. I have a couple photos of the yews I found, but I don't have them immediately available as I write this post.

No Rain Since

2007-08-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

I believe this photo of wild roses was taken on the last day that there was significant rain on Isle Royale, and it was really only a light rain that day as well. The shot was taken on the Scoville Point Trail on July 10 of this year. I am writing in late August now. So you see that we have been without rain for a long, long time. The island is starting to take a beating because of the lack of rain, as beautiful as it always is. Once again, the trails are getting very dusty and the campsites are getting rather harended under foot. The forecast has been for rain many times over the past couple weeks, but nothing has come our way. It is all coming down elsewhere in the Midwest, and some places have had bad floods and even mudslides, in Ohio and Wisconsin.

Don't Get a Soaker

2007-08-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

My son Logan, 14 years old, came out to Isle Royale with me one day recently on a day that I was working as captain of the Queen IV. By boat, we went out to an island near the northeast tip of the main island, North Government Island. Logan and I both were trying to walk along the short cliffs on the north side of the outer island that afternoon. Our progress was finally stopped at this particular cliff, the one in the photo, which ran out of an edge to get a step on. Around the corner of the cliff face on the left side of the photo, the cliff was too sheer. This is basalt rock, some of the oldest exposed rock on planet earth. These ancient lava flows form the ridges that you see all around Isle Royale. They're fun to climb on, too.

Loons

2007-08-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

Man oh man, have the loons been out this summer at Isle Royale. By my estimate, there are three pairs of loons living and breeding in Rock Harbor, the main entry harbor, and another couple pairs in Tobin Harbor close by. I have been seeing the loons regularly on my canoe and boat journeys at the island this year. They seem not the least concerned with boating traffic of any kind any longer. My son Logan and I went past a loon in our roundabout -- the loon just popped up close by all of a sudden -- at a distance of only about 25 feet and didn't even flinch or pay us the least mind. This is a shot of one of the Rock Harbor loons fishing near Bat Island, which stands across the channel from the islet on which I was standing to take the photo. There have been so many days lately just like the one shown, beautifully sunny with pleasant temperatures and low humidity. Sad to say, we need rain, and it's starting to get serious. I would say the island is in semi-drought conditions now and is drying out dangerously. I am hiking with greater care because everything is getting that burned-out look.

Unloading the Boat at Rock Harbor

2007-08-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

When one arrives daily at Isle Royale on the Isle Royale Queen IV these days, it can be quite a sight as everyone starts getting organized on the dock for departing on their backpacking or boating journeys. This is a shot from one morning day a couple weeks ago, maybe the last day when the weather was even slightly iffy (though it certainly wasn't bad on this foggy day). The days have been just spectacular ever since on the island and on the Keweenaw Pennisula, with one sunny, impossibly bright day after another. It's a great time of year. Lots of people are going to the island, but no one's coming back the least disappointed in their trip. How can you be disappointed with this great place?

The Keweenaw Approaches

2007-07-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Oh, these wonderful summer days, the dog days as they say. Here's a shot over the bow of the Isle Royale Queen IV on the daily return trip from Isle Royale to Copper Harbor. The two gentlemen in the photo were both taking a day trip to the island with their wives, and they had a great time during their 3 1/2 hours on the island in the Rock Harbor area. How can you not have a good time, when the weather has been so darn perfect day after day, as it so often is at this time of year. We offer day-trip specials all summer long, sometimes really low prices, sometimes just moderately low, but always a darn good price for going over and back on the same day. It's a great way to find out something about the island before you make the expense of going to stay overnight. I've marked the location of Copper Harbor in the distance as we look at the Keweenaw Peninsula as the Queen IV approaches from the northwest. The boat was about 15 miles off the coast. The air temp was about 48 degrees, but the sun was so warm on this day, like so many others lately, that one of the guys was out on the bow in shirt-sleeves.

Young Moose in Snug Harbor

2007-07-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

Moose are down on the island this year, as you know from the annual Moose-Wolf survey conducted each winter (a link to the press release on the survey is available on this blog in an earlier post). Consequently, people are seeing moose much less often than in previous summers. But there have been a few very interesting sightings. One was the occasion of a pair of twin calves with their mother crossing right through the Snug Harbor marina and dock area, the developed part of the Isle Royale. I wasn't there, but Isle Royale Queen IV crewman Jaime Engstrom was, and he took the shot you see of the two calves over by the Rock Harbor Lodge dock. Their mother is just up ahead of them in the photo, at the foot of the dock in the shadows. Jaime took the shot from the deck of the Queen IV across Snug from the Lodge Dining Room, which you see in the background. I still haven't a moose myself this year

Two Islands Now One

2007-07-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

On a recent day out at the island, I took my canoe across Rock Harbor to Shaw Island, just to the southwest of the main dock in Snug Harbor. I pulled up on a large stone beach, which is shown in the photo. The Isle Royale Queen IV stands at the big main dock in Snug about a mile away from this beach. The interesting thing about the photo is that this stone beach has been completely under water for nearly a century before low water exposed it this summer. I have canoed right over this beach between Smithwick Island and Shaw Island many, many times. Now these islands are run together as one. The water level of Lake Superior has come up a little over the summer. Someone from Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the north side of Superior, told me that that area has has been having a lot of rain. Copper Harbor and Isle Royale have not seen any more than average rainfall, and some parts of the Upper Peninsula remain in a semi-drought.

Canoeing along Rock Harbor

2007-07-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

Foggy days, rainy days, windy days -- they were suddenly gone this past week, and Isle Royale became the glorious northwoods, lakeshore wilderness that it is most of the time in the summer, especially in July, the month with the very best weather on this great island. Here's a shot of the cliffs on one of the outer islands along the edge of Rock Harbor. It was taken from my canoe as I easily cruised along the islands one fine day recently. This was one of those days that just make you glad that you're alive and spending any amount of time at Isle Royale. It was in the 60s, the sun was amazingly bright, the winds were calm, the water was stunningly clear, the birds were swooping and diving and calling. What a day!

Rainy, Foggy Days

2007-07-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

What a strange summer for weather so far. We've had lots of very cool days and lots of wind, which is pretty unusual for July. There has even been a good deal of fog, which has been almost non-existent for the past 10 years during the summers. A few days ago we had one of the worst days in July that I can ever remember. The high temp was about 55 and the wind was blowing about 20 mph and a steady rain was falling. It was a day of that icy dampness that makes life up in the north country miserable. And yet when it all passed, quite suddenly, the sun came out and the following days turned positively glorious. Yesterday, I was out at the island and had a wonderful time canoeing in Rock Harbor under a brilliant sun. The photo was taken about a week ago at Rock Harbor. It is a shot of the Queen IV at the main Snug Harbor dock where both the Queen IV and the Ranger III, the NPS boat out of Houghton, moor when they are at the island. Obviously, the photo was taken on one of our foggy days of late.

Tadpoles on Smithwick Island

2007-07-11T10:57:00.001-07:00

On a day I was captain recently, my niece Elaine Ronan, from Laurium, went over to Isle Royale with me for a day trip. It was one of those great Isle Royale days, so common in June and July. The sun was high and bright, the air clean and clear, the humidity seemed about zero. The temps were running in the 60s. The water was crystal clear. I took this shot on Smithwick Island, which Elaine and I went out to in the captains' runabout. This island stands in the line of islands that forms the south side of 15-mile-long Rock Harbor. We hiked along the Smithwick shore to a couple of beaches about half way down this island.

On the hike back to the runabout I was talking to Elaine about a pair of researchers I had met on Smithwick one day a couple weeks ago. They were doing a tadpole count on Smithwick Island in the pools near the edge of Lake Superior. Elaine found a few tadpoles that took part in the researchers' annual count in the warm waters just back of the cold, cold waters of Superior. At this time of year, even at the lake's edge at Isle Royale, the water temp can be in the 40s. Here's a shot of one of these tough creatures in Elaine's hands. She doesn't like to have her picture taken (she's 17 this month, but she has always given me trouble when I try to take her photo), and so I cut her some slack and didn't put the one I sneaked of her face on the blog.

The Progress of Spring

2007-06-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

It's still spring, even in late June, in some areas of Isle Royale. I had a fascinating visit to Edwards Island last week, in which I walked through spring as I moved away from the lakeshore on this small, narrow island up near Blake Point at the farthest northeast reaches of Isle Royale. I walked in from the stone beach I had pulled my boat onto and found that the plants were just coming out, as shown in this first photo, which also shows many spruces blown down by the winter winds, as is so common near the edges of the main island and its outlying islands.

As I moved northeast toward a pretty cove on Edwards, I found the plants higher, though still in a stage that I would call spring-like. This next shot is of the cove, looking northeast toward North Government Island, the next island up the chain that forms Rock Harbor. You see that the vegetation has progressed toward a stage that we could call late spring. The day I was there, you could feel clearly how this works. Near the beach, the cool wind off cold Rock Harbor, water temperature about 40 degrees, was sharply cooler, perhaps 15 to 20 degrees, than the air up amid the spruces.

Big Ships

2007-06-23T13:26:00.001-07:00

What a gorgeous morning to make the crossing to Isle Royale. This shot was taken on a recent weekday morning when I was serving as captain on the family ferry. In the distance was the Paul R. Tregurtha, the Queen of the Lakes -- which means the largest ship currently sailing the Great Lakes. I told the passengers in the cabins that she was passing in front of us and a couple dozen people came out to get a look and take a photograph of their own. Quite a sight on quite a morning.

Butterfly Season

2007-06-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

Butterflies have been all over Isle Royale of late. The Monarchs and other varieties have been passing through and filling the woods. Sadly, yet necessarily, plenty of dead Monarchs have been found on the shores all around the island and its surrounding islands. Here's a shot of a Swallowtail on the Rock Harbor Trail recently. As most everyone knows, the major wildlife, what my zoologist daughter calls the Charismatic Megavertebrates, is down on the island this year. There have been a few sightings of a pair of twin calves and their mother in the Snug Harbor area (that's where the Queen IV docks and the Rock Harbor Lodge is located). But this is the best I have been able to do on wildlife shots since I've been out this year on my three crossings as captain of the Queen IV.

The Queen IV

2007-06-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm taking my regular shift at the helm of the Isle Royale Queen IV now that I've been up in Copper Harbor a couple weeks. This is a shot of me standing on Hunters Point across the Harbor from the dock in the center of town. That's the Queen IV, of course, in the distance. June is a great time to go to Isle Royale. People often ask -- almost every phone call -- about the best time to go. June is great because the lake weather is generally placid (though we did have a couple rough trips last week) and the weather is great for hiking -- and the island has fewer hikers and visitors and the bugs ain't bad at all and our prices are lower, too. But still people favor those last weeks of July and the first weeks of August despite all we do to get them to see that June is a great time to go. Think about it next year.

Low Water in Tobin Harbor

2007-06-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a shot of Tobin Harbor a few days ago. You can see the water level is very, very low. It's not at record levels, but seems to be getting awfully close to the record, which took place in the 1920s. I've never walked in the spot I'm taking the photo from. Usually, the water is up to the level of the grass on the left of the photo, but now the edges of the bottoms of the harbors can be seen all around the island. I think the water has come up a bit in the past few days, maybe about 6 inches, but we have a long way to go before we come close to average lake levels. You will see some unusual sights when you visit the island this year because of the low water. By the way, the photo was taken on Tobin Harbor down near Suzy's Cave.

Captain Don R.

2007-06-07T12:38:00.000-07:00

The 5 days-a-week runs have begun on the Queen IV. Here's a shot of my brother Captain Don R. Kilpela on the Queen Dock one eveing this week. That's our nephew Sam Eberhard behind him. Sam is working as a deckhand this year on the Queen, the third and last of the Hancock Eberhard boys to work for us in the family business. That's the Queen IV in the background, of course. Special day-trip prices for the month of June are now in effect, just $31 (!!) for a day-trip over to Isle Royale during the whole month of June. Come on up and join in the fun. It's a great day, 3 hours over, 3.5 hours there, and 3 hours back. We'd love to show you this great American wilderness, along with a great boat ride across the world's largest body of fresh water.

My next shot is of the Queen IV in the distance coming in past the Habor Haus restaurant this week. It had reportedly been a fabulous day on the Lake this day, with calm seas almost the entire way. We love these days as much as our patrons.

The Queen IV Arrives in Copper Harbor

2007-05-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

The season must be just about to begin, since the Isle Royale Queen IV has moved from Houghton to Copper Harbor for the start of the 2007 season on May 15. This is a shot of our two-year-old vessel by Captain Donald Kilpela, Sr. of the arrival a couple days back. By the way, I stole this shot from my Dad's blog "Circumnaigating." You will want to check that blog out. It not only has an interesting series of posts on the history of Isle Royale passenger ferry service out of Copper Harbor, the GATEWAY to ISLE ROYALE as it has been called for decades, but also the current series on my Dad's adventures in the oil tanker business. The blog can be found at:

http://www.circumnavigating.blogspot.com/

A Poem Mentioning Isle Royale

2007-04-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

If you know my blogs, you know that I write about literature and poetry on my Yvor Winters blog and, hence, you also must have guessed that I follow and study poetry. For the first time in my life, I ran across a poem that mentions Isle Royale in a national publication of some sort. The poem was published on Poetry Daily, a site I follow, and can be found at:

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13633

I just had to mention it. I won't give you my opinion of it or an interpretation. It seems pretty clear to me. But it was rather interesting that I stumbled across it.

Opening of the 2007 Season Draws Near

2007-04-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

We're getting ready! Captain John and Captain Don Kilpela report that work has begun on preparing the Isle Royale Queen IV for the 2007 sailing season to Isle Royale National Park. Our superb new boat is currently moored on the Houghton waterfront on Portage Lake, about 45 miles from Copper Harbor, as the crow flies. Last week, there was a huge blizzard, one of the biggest ever (even for the Keweenaw), in the western Upper Peninsula that dumped 30-50 inches of snow, depending on location. My brother John says that the new snow has mostly melted. My daughter Miranda has been on the reservation phone up in CH most of the late winter and spring. Say hello when you're making your reservations. Here's a shot of the Queen IV from a couple years ago, heading out for the island on a gorgeous morning. Not long now until we begin repeating this scene.

Isle Royale's Moose and Wolf Populations Drop in 2007

2007-03-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

The report on this year's winter study of Isle Royale's famed moose and wolf populations has been released. Things continue to go badly for the moose, and now the wolves, as would be predicated, have declined as well. The MTU news release on the report is attached as a comment to this post.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 18

2007-02-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

I close this year's slide show with a shot of some of our passengers disembarking from the Isle Royale Queen IV in Copper Harbor. This was taken the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, 2006. Note our beautiful new pier. It was a good summer. I hope you're planning a trip for 2007. More to come on this blog besides the annual slide show as the spirit moves me.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 17

2007-02-02T11:46:00.000-08:00

A shot along one of Isle Royale's nicest and easiest trails, from Moskey Basin to Lake Ritchie. It is always a satisfying moment when after a couple miles of fine hiking you finally see Ritchie come into view down the ridge east of the lake through the tall aspens that form stands all along the way. The view has changed a lot since my early days on the island, when I was a teenager in the early '70s. The forest up this ridge was denser and you couldn't see Ritchie in the distance, except for a very small glimpse. But the aspens have grown taller in the 30 intervening years and there have been other changes along this trail. I really enjoy this moment and always pause to savor it, and Lake Ritchie really is a beautiful place to visit at any time.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 16

2007-01-30T07:03:00.000-08:00

In early September, 2006, a touch of fall had come to the high ridges of the island. That's not so strange, but there was more color than usual, at least in my memory. The splash of color along the Greenstone Ridge, the spine of the island, was brought about by the maples turning early in 2006. This shot was taken on a wonderfully cool, sunny late afternoon on the trail from Daisy Farm to Mount Ojibway. It's a nice trail that gives you just about every kind of terrain found on Isle Royale in a two-mile hike -- ridge, forest, swamp. And there is the reward of the view at the end, that great vista to be seen from the Ojibway Fire Tower.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 15

2007-01-24T12:03:00.000-08:00

Oh what an evening it was! This shot was taken from the Tooker's Island dock one August evening, at about 10:00. That's Inner Hill Island in the distance and Rock Harbor to the right. Open Lake Superior is on the left, out of the picture. My Dad used to say always that one of the special moments on the Big Lake is when the moonbeams fall across the water. And here they are, caught on film. You can order this as a large print from me. I can even frame it for you. My daughter Miranda and I are going to be putting up an Isle Royale Store some time soon, with clothing and photos and other IR items.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 14

2007-01-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

The M/V Sandy passing by on Rock Harbor. The Sandy is the touring vessel of the Rock Harbor Lodge. It makes trips to various locations, near and far, on the northeast end of Isle Royale. I've taken many trips on the Sandy over the years and have always enjoyed Captain Ron Jeddda's narrations. The Sandy also makes a few trips up and down Rock Harbor as a water taxi, though the Lodge uses other, smaller, faster boats for that service more often. They can reach locations farther out on the island with their fast boats.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 13

2007-01-18T06:50:00.000-08:00

Along the Rock Harbor trail, late August. Here's a good look at harborside trail conditions nowadays on the island. You frequently come across long sections of trail that are criss-crossed with roots and dotted with rather good-sized rocks. Wear good ankle-high boots is my recommendation. This part of the RH trail is directly across from Mott Island and close to the old Siskiwit Mine, which is still a very interesting place to explore in the dense thickets surrounding the old mine shafts. The area has become increasing overgrown in the past couple decades, so it must look completely different from how it looked in the late 1800s, when miners worked along Rock Harbor. Rather hard to believe any longer that mining ever took place out here, so far have we come from the copper mining boom days of long ago.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 12

2007-01-15T07:58:00.000-08:00

A thicket. Sometimes you want to go off trail to find some berries or inspect a patch of wild flowers or to get a wider view. And often as not you wind up working your butt off scratching your way through thickets like this one, on Inner Hill Island on Rock Harbor. The forests of Isle Royale are often daunting, mostly because of downed trees. The reason there are so many downed trees: the soil is thin, the trees don't put down deep roots, the island is exposed to heavy winds off Lake Superior, and, as consequence of these conditions, many trees, large and small, get blown down before their time and wind up creating difficult tangles in the woods.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 11

2007-01-12T07:38:00.000-08:00

I promised to get back to the island's berry crop. Here's a shot of some of the wild blueberries that I picked one day in mid-August. The blueberry season was very short. It was just too dry. But the berries were excellent, large and abundant, for a brief time, as you can see from the photo. Berry season is always a favorite time for me and other members of the family, especially my brother Captain Don Kilpela, who loves Isle Royale thimbleberries, which come out near the end of August on the island. That's almost a month after the thimbleberries come out in force on the Michigan mainland.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 10

2007-01-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

Two backpackers passing on the Rock Harbor Trail. It's been so dry the hiking was generally excellent on the island this past summer. The only problem was the dust. Hikers tramped on the ground without rain for so long that a thin layer of very fine dirt formed along many long stretches of trail. That's nothing to complain about, but it was certainly a little odd. I did a lot of hiking on my days at the island this year. I've been spending most of my time in my canoe in recent years, but I might try to get in a little more hiking since I enjoyed the walks I took so much.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 9

2007-01-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

It was a somewhat dark and blustery afternoon in early September when I went down to the historic Edison fishery for a visit. The fisherman and his wife were gone to Mott for supplies, so I was there alone. Walking back to the visitor's dock to get in my boat, I stopped by the main house and found this patch of day lilies blooming by the back door. You never know when flowers will bloom on the island, and there are often surprises late in the season. Before I saw this shot, I had spent some time over at the Rock Harbor Lighthouse, which is close by, but I couldn't get my boat up on the stone beach there, as is my usual parking practice, because of the heavy seas rolling into Middle Island Passage.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 7

2006-12-22T11:10:00.001-08:00

Here's one to startle you. Edwards Island, Isle Royale, at the northeast end of Tobin Harbor, and over the ridge comes a pair of dangerous velociraptors. Yes, this is a bit of digital chicanery, done to one of my own photos by my 14-year-old son Logan, who can be found in other annual Isle Royale slide shows. Log' has been working with Photoshop Elelments lately, and he's made a few Isle Royale dino shots. There was no island in this location, science has decided, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs ruled. Still, the ridges that form the island today did exist back then, having been created hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs inhabited the Earth. Those ridges came into being when the vast solidified lava lakes of the Great Midcontinent Rift (which occured about 1 billion years ago and was located, in part, where Lake Superior now lies) became so heavy that the crust of the Earth sank into the mantle and the ends of those dozens of layers of cooled lava bent upward. Those massive, miles-upon-miles-wide, broken, bent-up slabs of the Earth's crust formed the ridges of the Keweenaw Peninusla to the southeast and of Isle Royale to the northwest, as though they were the rims of a bowl. Dinosaurs lived in areas not so distantly west of the Lake Superior region, and at the same latutude. I have never read, however, whether dinorsaurs once hiked the ridges that would become the bones of Isle Royale tens of millions of years later. It was a mere 10,000 years or so ago that the last great Ice Age created the glaciers that formed Lake Superior and the island, which was made a national park of the United States in 1940.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 8

2006-12-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

This shot was taken on the same day as Slide 6 of my son Drew. This time, though, I give you a shot of my wife Marsha, nestled down in broad carpets of juniper, picking blueberries on Long Island, just up Tobin Harbor from Porter Island. That's Edwards Island in the distance across the harbor.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 6

2006-12-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

This is my son Drew, now 11 years old, picking blueberries on Porter Island near the northeast end of Tobin Harbor in late August. I think it's interesting that Drew looks as though he is picking juniper berries. Often, wild blueberry plants are tangled with spreading juniper on Isle Royale's ridges and outcroppings. Most of the blueberries, Drew is telling me as I type here in Mason, MI, on Christmas Day, were yet to ripen. My memory is different. I thought we found plenty and that they were in pretty good shape. Maybe it was just the location he was picking in, up high on the ridge that forms Porter Island. In any case, we had a great time, picking and exploring and cruising the harbors and coves, even though the rain was spitting.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 5

2006-12-22T08:06:00.000-08:00

A quiet evening along Tobin Harbor. It was late summer, and I was snooping for moose, and so staying very, very quiet. None were to be heard or found, but the subtle beauties of Isle Royale on a day of heavy cloud-cover were on display. I love and cherish these calm moments late on a gloomy day, just before the gloaming (to offer a bit of heavy-handed alliteration for all present and former English majors out there). There was hardly a sound, except for the occasional bleat of a loon or two far away up the harbor. It would rain a bit later, but these moments along this passage among Tobin islands near Thompson Island have become a special memory.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 4

2006-12-20T07:38:00.000-08:00

What a glorious spring on Isle Royale it was in 2006. Spring in summer? you ask. Well, yes. Spring on the island comes about 4 weeks later than elsewhere in northern Michigan, so in June we are still in spring on Isle Royale, though we call it summer. To repeat, things have been dry, near drought in the Lake Superior Basin for some time. But there has been just enough rain at just the right times to have some beautiful spring conditions here and there, such as along the Tobin Harbor Trail, where I took this shot of a hearty phalanx of bunchberries, or Canada dogwood. Note the dense stand of spruce along this section of trail, not an uncommon site along the northeast harbors. Such thickets are the indirect result of moose gluttony, since their love of balsam fir strictly represses the growth of balsam, which gives spruce the power to dominate. This is changing, though. With the moose population down for almost 10 years now, stands of balsam have once again gained a toehold here and there in areas that the spruce once thought secure for their own kind.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 3

2006-12-18T14:10:00.000-08:00

Taken along the Scoville Point Trail in late June. These are wild strawberry flowers in the sunshine after a short afternoon rain. The island continued to suffer near-drought conditions throughout most of the summer, however. The strawberry crop turned out rather poor. I must admit, though, that the raspberries and the blueberries both came in with excellent crops in summer 2006. That's a bit odd, since I was expecting raspberries to flourish in the dry weather and blueberries to get quickly burned out. But a few days of brief rain at the right time seemed to save the blueberries. More on this coming later.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 2

2006-12-15T11:30:00.000-08:00

In July, I took a paddle by canoe out to Laurel Lei Lane (I'm unsure of the spelling, by the way) and visited the shallow, narrow gap between Shaw and Smithwick Islands. This shot is from Shaw looking northeast toward Smithwick on a spectacular Isle Royale summer day. That, of course, is a wood lily in the foreground. This is a favorite place for me on IR -- the whole of Laurel Lei Lane, I mean. (Well, perhaps I should point out that I have a hundred or so "favorite" places on IR, so I don't how meaningful the adjective is in this context. I suppose my favorite of favorites is the place I happen to be in at any one moment.) It runs from Raspberry Island on the NE to Mott Island on the SW about 4 miles or so. I am often found paddling out in the Lane on a summer's day. Shaw Island doesn't seem to get quite as much traffic as Smithwick Island. Shaw is almost all solid rock on its edges, as shown in this photo, whereas Smithwick has a few cobble beaches to land a canoe or kayak.

2006 Slide Show, Photo 1

2006-12-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

Let's start out this year's slide show with a shot in Copper Harbor of the new Isle Royale Queen IV at the Queen dock in the center of town. 2006 was the first full summer of operation for the Queen IV. But notice the brand-new dock, which was yet another improvement to the service provided by the Kilpela family. We had a great year with the new boat. People seemed to be very pleased with the much faster service to the island -- just a little more than 3 hours one-way. And we took many more day-trippers to the island than ever before. She takes the seas a bit better, too, and people always appreciate that. The Queen IV is a little more than 100 feet long, tip to tip. We're considering more improvements in the next few years.

Introduction

2006-12-13T08:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a new way to put up my annual slide shows and let you comment on the slides or any other matter and send your own Isle Royale photos, if you wish. I'm Captain Ben Kilpela, of the family that owns the Isle Royale Queen IV, the 100-foot vessel that sails from Copper Harbor, MI, to Rock Harbor on Isle Royale nearly every day in summer. I have posted annual slide shows on my Isle Royale web site for some years (a link is on the front page of this blog), but I decided to put up this blog as a new way to present those slide shows and share news, happenings, and reflections on Isle Royale, Michigan's only national park and one of the only two island national parks in the United States. Welcome to the blog.