On Conglomerate's Cliffs

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.