Greetings from Traverse City, Michigan! Wow, where to even start…this is precisely why I hate having to go this long in between updates. I realize that I’ve only been back from Isle Royale for a little over a week, but it feels like a month, and my memory is made even hazier by the twenty pounds of snot currently surrounding my brain. I’m feeling really guilty, I was supposed to meet up with my friend Mike today, we haven’t seen each other since we were in the same Algebra II class my sophomore year in high school, my last year here in TC…and I just bailed on him. Drowning in snot isn’t making me the most pleasant person to be around, and the sleep deprivation isn’t helping either. Although, technically, I likely still would have been awake obsessively reading the final book in the “Twilight” saga even if a street sweeper hadn’t cleaned the Walmart parking lot until after five this morning. I’m texting with Mike at the moment and he’s laughing about my choice of locations to compose this (not-so) little blog…I’ve stationed myself in a shady spot in view of the old Traverse City State Hospital, though the loonies are long gone and they’re slowly remodeling the buildings for use as apartments, shops and cafes. I’m more fond of the rundown/overgrown look personally, but I guess I should just be glad that they aren’t tearing the asylum down like they have several on the East Coast.
As usual, I’m rambling, though I’m sure there’s plenty more where that came from. When I last left off in Duluth, I started working my way toward Grand Portage, Minnesota, in the far northeast corner of the state, just a couple miles from the Canadian border. I vaguely recall doing a little hiking at Tettegouche and Split Rock State Parks, but most of my time before catching the boat out to Isle Royale was spent packing my gear and getting ready for my first major solo backpacking outing. I’d done a couple overnight excursions, but this would be four nights on the island. A little background on the national park…it’s made up of the one big island, which is roughly forty-five miles long and nine miles at its widest, and all the little islands surrounding it. It’s located twenty-some miles from Grand Portage, and accessible only by boat (from Grand Portage, or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula) or sea plane. There are no motor vehicles on the island, and with the exception of a a few tourist amenities in Rock Harbor and Windigo (restaurant, lodge, general store, visitor center, etc) and wooden, three-sided shelters at some of the campgrounds, the island is very much a wilderness. Yellowstone receives more visitors in a single day than Isle Royale receives in an entire year, though I’ve also heard that while it’s the least visited national park in the system, it also has the most return visitors. I haven’t quite decided yet if I would go back…
Having already scouted out the boat dock the afternoon before my impending departure, I was no longer surprised by the size of the Voyageur II (60-70 feet?) when I arrived that Wednesday morning. I’d seen pictures of the Wenonah, which only does day trips between Grand Portage and Windigo, on the nearest, western end of the island, and had automatically assumed the Voyageur II would look similar. Not even close. If I’d thought about it more, I’d have been expecting a smaller boat, as the Voyageur II has to be small enough to enter several different harbors and coves to drop hikers and kayakers off at various locations all around the island, the entire reason for me taking a boat from Grand Portage as opposed to from Michigan, where the ferries only offer service to and from Rock Harbor, at the eastern end of the island. I was planning to take the boat to Rock Harbor, and hike a slightly roundabout 24-miles down to Chippewa Harbor, where I would get picked up Sunday morning. Well, that was the plan before the rain started anyway…
The boat ride out to Rock Harbor was long and uneventful, but thankfully the weather was still decent, if occasionally cloudy, and the water was calm. There were roughly twenty-five people on the boat with me, which helped to pass the 7 1/2 hours it took to reach Rock Harbor, finally arriving at about 2:30 CST. I chatted with a lot of really great people…Stacey & Louise, Greg & Cathy, Bill from Iowa, the couple from Virginia, the woman & daughter from Eau Claire…spending so many hours in such close quarters had its perks – since most of the people on the boat were staying at the lodge or starting their hikes in Rock Harbor (or had to stay overnight to continue on with the boat the following morning to get dropped off somewhere along the southern side of the island), there were lots of familiar faces and everyone greeted me like an old friend when I bumped into them in the Rock Harbor area. I pitched my tent and set up camp and after a lengthy chat with a very nice ranger named Pete (I’d needed to inquire about how not to transfer the spiny water flea from Lake Superior to the inland lakes through my water filter, since I wasn’t carrying a stove and couldn’t boil water to clean the filter) I grabbed my camera gear and hiked down to Scoville Point. It was a lovely day, but it had cleared up too much at that point and I found myself highly uninspired. I hiked the two miles back to camp, got sidetracked talking to Bill from the boat for a while, and eventually went to bed.
There wasn’t much of a sunrise the following morning, Thursday, but at least there were some clouds to make things somewhat interesting. After tearing down my tent and getting my gear packed up, I set off on the 7 1/2 mile hike down to the Daisy Farm campground where I was staying for the night. The hike took me much less time than I’d expected and I arrived around 1:30, in plenty of time to snag one of several first-come-first-served wooden shelters. I was highly annoyed though, I hadn’t expected to have that much downtime, and day hiking didn’t seem like much of an option at that point since my feet were very angry with me and hadn’t liked hauling my heavy, 55-pound pack over the uneven terrain, even if there wasn’t much of an elevation change. Thankfully, after a nap, some ibuprofen, a Snickers bar, and some wading in the chilly Lake Superior waters, I was able to put my boots back on and headed up the Greenstone Ridge to the lookout on Mt. Ojibway. The sky was very overcast, but I was pleased not to be sitting in the shelter staring at the wall, and since there are no bears on the island, there was no competition for the many wild raspberries, blueberries and thimbleberries along the trail. It was just starting to rain when I arrived back at camp for the night, and I went to bed early for lack of anything better to do.
And that was when everything started to go downhill, rapidly. It rained most of Thursday night but was only sprinkling by the time I had my gear packed again the next morning, and I was thankful for having had the wooden shelter since there was no need to put away a wet tent. I put on my rain jacket and threw a rain cover over my pack, but opted not to wear my rain pants since it seemed way too warm. I knew the brush along the trails would be wet, but my pants were lightweight and always dried out pretty quickly so I wasn’t particularly worried. One of the high points of my trip occurred about a mile and a half into my hike as I headed back up toward the Greenstone Ridge. There was a wolf in a clearing along the trail, not more than thirty feet from me. My first reaction was “Wow, that’s a Big dog!” Unfortunately, after the camera-breaking incident while backpacking at Mt. Rainier, my camera gear was safely stowed in my pack. The wolf hung around in the clearing while I got my pack on the ground and starting pulling off the pack cover, but then decided he’d lost interest in posing and took off. Besides seeing a moose from behind, way across Windigo Harbor, the wolf was my only wildlife sighting of the trip. If I remember correctly, Ranger Valerie had mentioned during our orientation upon arriving on the island that there were roughly 550 moose on the island, but only twenty-four wolves, so seeing a wolf was quite a treat.
It was pouring rain by then, and I didn’t hang around to see if the wolf would return. I made good time covering the almost nine miles to the West Chickenbone Lake campground, and was dismayed to see that it was only 12:30. There were no shelters at this rather remote campground, nor even any people, and the thought of pitching my tent in the downpour and sitting in it for the next twenty hours didn’t sound at all appealing, so I opted to continue hiking to another campground. I was very much wishing that I’d worn my rain pants after all. What I hadn’t foreseen that morning was that all the rain running off my waterproof pack cover would in turn run down the backs of my legs, and into my boots. I was very wet and cold by the time I eventually wound up at Moskey Basin and despite my late arrival, miraculously found one shelter still open. Moskey Basin was just a 3 1/2 mile hike from Daisy Farm if I’d taken the more straight forward way…instead I’d lugged my heavy pack 13 1/2 miles through the rain. It rained, and rained…and rained some more. With the humidity level so high, none of my clothing dried at all, and I’d had to pour the water out of my boots. I know there were other people in semi-close proximity to me in the other shelters, but with the wind and rain, I never heard a peep out of them. Out of sheer boredom and the need to try to warm up, I was in my sleeping bag before 4:30pm.
It was still raining the following morning, Saturday, and there was no end in sight. I could have headed for Chippewa Harbor, but I didn’t know if there were shelters there, and with less than seven miles of hiking to get there and the boat not due for another twenty-four hours, I opted to hike the 11 1/2 miles back to Rock Harbor in hopes of at least finding a book or some form of entertainment. The boredom was driving me insane. The trail was a nightmare, the rain having turned it into a stream in some places, and small ponds in others. I’d been carefully picking my way along, trying to keep my still-wet boots from filling with water again, but eventually came to a huge puddle that I couldn’t go around, and the water turned out to be higher than the tops of my boots. After that, it no longer made a difference if I slogged right through the water or not.
Much to my surprise, when I reached Rock Harbor again around 1:30, it had slowly stopped raining and looked like it might actually clear up. I also found a posting down near the boat dock stating that the Voyageur II had been unable to leaving Grand Portage that morning due to severe weather conditions, and would be arriving several hours later the following day instead. It had been obvious on the southern side of the island that the weather was terrible, but we had been unable to see gale force winds and fifteen foot waves on the opposite side. Rock Harbor was fairly crowded with people who had been scheduled to leave by plane Friday night, or boat/plane Saturday. Everything had been canceled. Apparently one of the larger boats to Copper Harbor, Michigan had departed the day before like planned, but it had been evident from the start that the three hour ride would be utterly miserable. The shelters were all taken so I wound up pitching my tent in the same site I’d been in before, and then headed off in search of a book. The small store didn’t carry anything by way of reading material, but the clerk did point me in the direction of the guesthouse, where I found precisely four books available for the taking, one of them being Stephanie Meyers’ “Twilight,” which I had actually been wanting to read. Yes, I am a silly romantic, I know, but I absolutely loved the movie. I try not to read much when I travel because I read in such an obsessive manner, which generally means I read the book in one sitting no matter how late into the night I have to stay up. When the weather finally cleared and the sun came out, I had to tear myself away from the book and force myself to remember why I was on the island in the first place, and I set out to take some pictures.
Nearly all of the pictures from Isle Royale were disappointing. I never found my groove there at all, even when the weather was semi-cooperative. Mostly, I spent that last evening chatting with my fellow hikers, and when I could no longer resist the pull of “Twilight” I headed back to my tent and read by headlamp until I’d finished the book. The following morning was actually a nice day, and after packing up my gear, I went down to the dock to wait for the boat. The island itself is part of Michigan, and operates on Eastern Standard Time, but with Grand Portage being on Central Time, the boat stays on Central Time to keep things less confusing. I had no clue which zone the arrival time was meant to be on, and I didn’t want to chance missing the boat and being stuck on the island any longer. I had had enough. I sat at a picnic table and got caught up on my postcards while chatting with a family from Sault Sainte Marie. I had actually met Mike on the trail from Moskey Basin the morning before, but thought he had confused me with someone else, and in turn was left very puzzled by the conversation that had ensued. He’d mentioned something about some kayakers and taking a water taxi, and I was further confused by why he was heading Toward Moskey Basin if they’d taken the water taxi out of there. All the pieces fell into place when I met him again later at Rock Harbor with his wife and two little boys, Connor and Liam. He’d left them at their shelter the morning before to hike to Rock Harbor to get a boat to come pick them up from Moskey Basin, it was too hard to hike with a four and five-year old in the pouring rain. He’d gotten lucky and only had to hike as far as Daisy Farm before meeting a ranger with a radio who made the arrangements, and was on his way back to the Moskey Basin campground to wait for that boat when I’d met them.
Some people I just click with instantly (like “Windpoint” Kathi and I, she’ll be coming up in the story again here shortly) and that’s how it was with Mike & Alice and their boys. Connor and Liam were just absolutely delightful to be around, they were both very outgoing and I’m not sure they’ve ever met anyone they would have called a stranger. Alice told me that it was too bad the boys and I weren’t closer in age, I’d have made a great daughter-in-law and fit in with their family very well. This somehow lead to a conversation regarding the lovable but slightly oddball people in our lives, and Mike told me about how he’d made a wooden sign for an eccentric family friend that said, “Naked Hippie Crossing.” He hung it (crooked) from a tree at the end of her driveway in the middle of the night. It took her two weeks to notice it, but she was tickled pink when she finally did, and has left the sign proudly hanging there ever since.
We had also been comparing the different sizes of our boats. The Ranger III had looked massive docked in Rock Harbor, and Mike and his family would be taking the somewhat smaller Copper Queen (I think?) back to Copper Harbor. We heard the sound of a horn and waited for the Voyageur II to come into the harbor. Alice laughed when she saw my boat, it looked downright tiny compared to the others. Small or not, it was my ticket off the island and off I went…Of the twenty-five people who had been on the boat to the island with me on Wednesday, by the time we’d stopped at Chippewa Harbor and Malone Bay, ten of those people were on same boat back to Grand Portage. It helped the time pass by much quicker to be able to talk to everyone and discuss how they’d survived the rain and where they’d been, what wildlife they had seen, etc. I spent a lot of time talking to Louise and Stacey, and also wound up meeting Doug and Patrick, who I hadn’t talked to at all on the way over. Doug lives down in Puerto Rico and has been riding his motorcycle around up here in the states for a bit, and had come up to Isle Royale to canoe with his son Patrick. He’s got a blog, http://salacia.mysite.com, and writes about their own adventure on the island, and in a much more succinct fashion than I do! Because the boat had left Grand Portage at 5am that morning and had already stopped in Windigo earlier that day, we didn’t have to stop there on the way back to Grand Portage. This not only saved us quite a bit of time, but also meant we went much closer to the Rock of Ages lighthouse than we had before. The lake was getting a lot rougher by the time, and it was impossible to keep a level horizon while shooting the lighthouse from the stern of the boat. I took a whole lot of pictures in hoping to get some of them even mostly in focus, I could always rotate them and straight them out if needed.
We got back to the dock a little after 7pm, and I headed to the marina campground for a much needed shower. By the time I’d cleaned up, driven far enough back down to Duluth to regain cell phone service (I’d somehow picked up one bar of service at the picnic table at my campsite that morning, but lost it if I moved more than six inches, and had at least been able to text my mom that the boat was late) and make the necessary phone calls. It was well after midnight before I found somewhere to sleep down in Duluth. Monday was spent mostly driving down to Green Bay to meet Kathi, with a minor layover at a laundromat when the stench of all my wet hiking clothing proved to be too much.
The last several days have passed in a blur as Kathi showed me around Door County before we headed up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to catch the sunset boat cruise along the cliffs. Kathi and I met at two separate lighthouses one day while I was passing through Wisconsin on my big 2006 trip. We hit it off and have kept in touch off and on since then. Still, we were both a little anxious about meeting again, since we were going to spend the better part of two days together and were desperately hoping we still liked each other! As it turned out, neither of us needed to worry, and I also very much enjoyed meeting her husband Ed. We wound up leaving at 3:30 Tuesday morning and set off to take pictures of sunrise at Cana Island Lighthouse. I’ll have to look at her notes to update my list of lighthouses, but I think we only missed one of the seven or eight lighthouses in Door County. The weather was horrendously nice (there was precisely one cloud in the sky at one point, and if you looked at it long enough, it looked like a giant cottonball slowly plummeting toward earth) which meant the lighthouses were not all that interesting for me (I like mine pretty, with clouds) but I think they appeal to Kathi for the architecture and history that goes along with them. We wound up taking a couple ferries and spent the afternoon wandering around Rock Island, where I found myself fascinated with the very fancy stone boat house there. Thordarsen, a nature conservationist and inventor, had meant to turn the island into a vacation retreat for his family but never seemed to get much further than the boathouse. Kathi was quite amused to watch me taking pictures of the brilliantly green colored mold growing on the walls in the lower portion, especially as i was getting my shots ThisClose to the moldy walls themselves. My current fascination with texture rubbed off on her, and in return her interest in tree roots rubbed off on me.
After searching in vain for a Mexican restaurant, we finally settled for some generic family diner where we were nearly the only customers, and then headed down to the Sturgeon Bay south jetty to scout the location for the next morning’s sunrise. Traveling with me is always an adventure, even when we’re not taking my car, and we still wound up sleeping in a Walmart parking lot. I don’t think Kathi slept much, I don’t think she does in general anyway, but she was up on all the comings and goings of the people at the 24-hr grocery store next door, and the random people out after the bars close. I never noticed any of it and slept like a log. Sunrise that morning wound up being phenomenal. There really weren’t much by way of clouds, but there was enough haze on the horizon to turn the sky brilliant shades of red and pink. I was in photographer heaven. Too bad I managed to lose my bubble level (it slides in the hotshoe on top of my camera and helps me keep a level horizon) on the walk back to the car. We headed for the north jetty and walked most of the way out to the lighthouse and that was when I first noticed it was missing. Since we weren’t in a rush, we headed back to the south jetty in hopes of finding it (they aren’t cheap) and luckily for me I actually found it halfway back to the jetty, smack in the middle of the path. If it had bounced into the weeds, I never would have seen it again.
We wound up going back to Kathi & Ed’s house and showered and hung out before we started the drive up to Munising to catch the boat cruise, taking our separate vehicles since she had to return that evening to be at work the morning, and I was going to stay and day hike (no backpacking anytime soon, not after Isle Royale) at Pictured Rocks. We also stopped at a bookstore so I could pick up second and third books of the “Twilight” saga on our way out of town. We were probably three-fourths of the way to Munising when Kathi started gesturing strangely from her position in the lead car, but I didn’t have any cell phone service to be able to figure out what she was getting at. She finally pulled over, and thankfully had realized what neither of us had before then…that Munising was on Eastern Standard Time, and if we didn’t get a move on it, we were going to miss the boat! Luckily, that wasn’t the case, and we did managed to make the boat on time. The cruise was very cool, with the golden sunset light reflecting off the cliffs onto Lake Superior, I didn’t need clouds to get good pictures. It was well worth having to put up with the captain’s too-dry sense of humor, though once in a while he did have a good joke or an interesting bit of trivia to relay. For instance, Lake Superior holds enough water that it could fill a swimming pool the size of the continental United States five feet deep. And if you happen to notice trees growing mid-cliff in any of my photos, while some of the rock slides happen very abruptly and large chunks of rock break off into the lake, others erode very slowly over time, giving the trees time to establish roots in highly unlikely places.
After the cruise ended, Kathi had to head back down to Green Bay and I went in search of somewhere to sleep for the night, now that none of my previous plans for Pictured Rocks applied. A huge thank you again to Kathi & Ed for their hospitality, and for Kathi taking the time off work to show me around her neck of the woods. I had a blast, and still keep laughing hysterically when I think of all the u-turns she wound up making…I think there were five or six of them just in an eight-mile stretch across Washington Island to catch the next ferry! I’ve been teasing her that I’m going to start calling her “U-turn” Kathi instead of “Windpoint”. Since then I’ve read both the books I bought in Green Bay, while also throwing in a ten-mile loop hike that covered some of the area I would have backpacked through, found clouds at the Au Sable Lighthouse, and spent a beautiful sunset at the rather remote Crisp Point. I’ve been in Traverse City since Saturday morning (oil change, check! tire rotation, check!) and technically I’ve taken some pictures since then (the Point Betsie Lighthouse Saturday night, and the insane asylum here yesterday morning) but I haven’t even uploaded any of those yet, and I don’t care. I’m at least mostly caught up otherwise, and that’s what counts! That, and having read the last “Twilight” book (purchased yesterday morning) so now my curiosity has been satisfied and I can focus on other things again.
And if that’s not all, it will have to do for the moment. One of these days I’ll get around to posting a “Random” blog, all the miscellaneous things I’ve meant to mention, but never quite have…
Oh, and the pictures I posted last night can be found in the Minnesota, Isle Royale, Wisconsin, Pictured Rocks, and Michigan albums.
