Visiting Isle Royale: Seeing Rain from Mount Franklin

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.

Isle Royale National Park

The Donald Kilpela family owns the Isle Royale Queen IV, the passenger ferry to Isle Royale National Park from Copper Harbor, Michigan. The three Kilpela brothers, Captains Don Jr., Ben, and John operate the vessel, which is 100 feet in length, carries up to 85 passengers, and has three cabins.

Isle Royale is a large island national park in Lake Superior, the largest fresh water sea in the world. The island is 55 miles northwest of Copper Harbor, which stands at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula.

Isle Royale is Michigan's only national park, one of the very few island national parks in the United States. It is mostly a spectacular northwoods wilderness, but it does have one developed area, Rock Harbor, to which our ferry service out of Copper Harbor sails nearly every day in summer and two days a week in May and September.

Copper Harbor and Isle Royale

Let's begin this overview with the town we sail from, Copper Harbor, which has long been known with good reason as The Gateway to Isle Royale. Copper Harbor's reputation as the Gateway started back in 1930, a dozen years before Isle Royale became a national park. It was then that the first charter service to the island started running out of Copper Harbor. Ferry service from the town to the island has continued ever since.

The current ferry operating between Copper Harbor and Isle Royale National Park is the Isle Royale Queen IV, a trim, fast 100-foot ship owned by the Donald Kilpela family, longtime Copper Harbor residents. The Kilpelas have owned the Isle Royale ferry service in Copper Harbor since 1971.

The ferry trip is a long one, some 55 miles from Copper Harbor. But that's the shortest distance for any transportation service from Michigan. The Isle Royale Queen IV makes the daily crossing in just over 3 hours. That's the shortest crossing time of any ferry service from either Michigan or Minnesota to the one developed area of the island, the Rock Harbor Entrance.

At Rock Harbor there's a small community. The Rock Harbor Lodge offers cabins and motel-style rooms. The Lodge, owned by Forever Resorts, has a superb dining room and grill that are open to all island visitors and also operates the Rock Harbor Marina, the Rock Harbor General Store, and other amenities.

The Rock Harbor Entrance is also the location of the Rock Harbor Visitors Center, operated by the U.S. National Park Service. There visitors can get complete information on making their Isle Royale visits memorable.

In addition, at the southwest entrance to the park, which is called Windigo (40 miles away from Rock Harbor), there is a small Visitors Center, boating facilities, and a snack bar.

What's there to do on Isle Royale?

Isle Royale offers wonderful lakeside and ridge-top views, superb wilderness hiking and backpacking (of moderate difficulty), lots of wonderful wilderness campgrounds, fine canoeing and kayaking, great wildlife viewing and fishing, endless photographic opportunities, and much more.

It's a huge island. Isle Royale is 45 miles long and about 10 miles wide. It's the second largest island in the Great Lakes. Isle Royale looks a lot like Copper Harbor and the Keweenaw Peninsula, but it's a wilderness and hence much more rugged and pristine. This makes it one of the most unusual places in North America, a spectacular and rugged Great Lakes wilderness that's very close to America's heartland. It is one of the largest wilderness parks east of the Mississippi River.

Except for the small developed area of Rock Harbor, the island is entirely wilderness. There are 165 miles of wilderness trails leading to more than 30 wilderness campgrounds, some large, most small and remote.

Visit the web sites of the National Park Service, the Isle Royale Queen IV, the Rock Harbor Lodge, and the web site and blogs of Copper Harbor's Captain Ben Kilpela for lots more information on visiting the island.

There are several ways to experience Isle Royale:

Stay at the Rock Harbor Lodge

There are lots of things to do during a stay at the island: day-hike, fish, sight-see, take boat tours, rent a canoe or kayak, and more. The Lodge offers excellent meals and rooms in various room-packages, or you can stay prepare your own meals in one of the Lodge's Housekeeping Cottages. With its superb setting on the shores of Rock and Tobin Harbors, the Rock Harbor Lodge can serve as your wilderness base camp with all the comforts of home.

Wilderness Hike and Backpack

Isle Royale's trails follow the Lake Superior shore and crisscross the vast, foresed interior, pass lakes and streams of all sizes, and traverse the high ridges of the island. There are dozens of possible hiking-backpacking itineraries that can be arranged and followed. Jim Dufresne's book on the island "Isle Royale Foot Trails and Water Routes" is the bible of island hiking. Captain Ben Kilpela sells an informative pamphlet on loop trails on the northeast half of the island. But are available through the Isle Royale Q ueen IV.

Canoe and Kayak

Isle Royale has become renowned across the world for the excellence of its sea kayaking and canoeing. There are many harbors and coves off Lake Superior and about two dozen inland lakes that have great fishing and superb views. Isle Royale has set up several portage systems for paddlers to get deep into the interior of the national park. If you love to paddle, Isle Royale is a must.

Visit for the Day

Yes, it's a great way to get a good taste of Isle Royale. The Isle Royale Queen IV offers fast round-trip service to Rock Harbor almost every day in summer. More and more people are taking advantage of day trips to the island from Copper Harbor. It takes a little over 3 hours to get to the island. You have 3.5 hours at the island. That's time for a long hike, a paddle, or some fishing. You can have even lunch at the Rock Harbor Lodge. Or you can simply relax at one of hundreds of isolated and beautiful spots along the trails near the Queen dock. Then it's 3 hours back to Copper Harbor, where you can have an outstanding meal at one of our village's fine restaurants and a great night's stay at one of our comfortable motels.

The Isle Royale Queen IV offers many Day-Trip specials throughout the summer. Check at the Queen dock in central Copper Harbor or the Community Center -- or give the Queen office a call. A Day-Trip from Copper Harbor is an excellent way to experience two of America's great natural treasures, Isle Royale and Lake Superior, the world's largest body of fresh water.

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Isle Royale has had a long and special connection to Copper Harbor. The businesses of Copper Harbor encourage you to give Isle Royale a try as part of your next vacation adventure.

Visiting Isle Royale

Seeing Rain from Mount Franklin

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