Saturday, July 19, 2025

My visit to Isle Royale







During the summer of 2000, my husband, three sons, and I went to Isle Royale National Park. If you have never been to Isle Royale, you're not alone. One of the least visited national parks in the United States, it attracts only around 25,000 visitors per year. In comparison, Yellowstone National park had 4.74 million visitors in 2024, and Great Smoky Mountains, the most popular national park in the United States, attracted over 12.1 million visitors.

One reason this park is so undervisited is because it's a challenge to reach. An island in Lake Superior, it can only be visited by boat or seaplane. Private boats can come to the Isle, but we, like most visitors, took a ferry. The Voyageur II runs from Grand Portage, MN.  It and its sister ship, the Sea Hunter III, reach Windigo in about 2 hours, but the Voyager continues on, traveling to Rock Harbor in about 8 hours. All along the way, it picks up and drops off passengers and, back when we traveled, mail and supplies for Islanders. Another company, The Royale Line, runs from Copper Harbor, MI, to Rock Harbor in 3.5 hours, and the Park Service (nps.gov/isro) runs the Ranger III from Houghton, MI, to Rock Harbor in about 6-hours.Isle Royale Seaplanes flies from Hancock, MI, and Grand Marais, MN, to Windigo or Rock Harbor.

Because of the severity of conditions on Lake Superior, the park is only open from mid-April through October. Weather can be unsettled in spring and fall; stormy conditions on Lake Superior affecting transport. Both Rock Harbor and Windigo have visitor centers that can help you orient and educate yourself, and can rent canoes and other supplies. They are open daily in season, with reduced hours outside of July and August. A visitor center at park headquarters in Houghton, Michigan is open year-round.

Once you've arrived, you'll find that Isle Royal is very rustic. 45 miles long and 9 miles wide, it has just one hotel, the Rock Harbor Lodge. The lodge's room have private baths, plus there is a dining room and a dockside store. Windigo has rustic one-room cabins, and there are 36 campgrounds scattered throughout the shores, and lakes, and promontories of the island. 17 of these campsites can accommodate larger groups.Some are nothing more than a flat spot and a fire ring, while others have three sided cabins, the fourth side covered in screen to keep out the mosquitos. We carried tents, sleeping bags and a backpacking stove, but welcomed the one cabin we came to during our five day trek. Non-fee permits are required for all camping and overnight boat docking or anchoring. Parties of 1 to 6 get permits on arrival but cannot reserve any specific sites. Groups of 7 to a maximum of 10 must reserve sites and obtain permits in advance through park headquarters.


Isle Royale National Park was designed to be a wilderness. It has no roads. If you want to travel the
island, you use one of the many foot trails, or a network of water routes for canoes and sea kayaks.The Greenstone Ridge Trail begins at Rock Harbor and follows the island's rocky spine, connecting numerous trails that drop off towards both the southern and northern shores in a web of hiking possibilities. This picture if of my three boys sitting on the granite rock at the island's highest point. 

We landed at Rock Harbor, where we rented three canoes for the five of us. Our youngest was just six, and we would have liked to have only rented two canoes, but regulations forbid three people in any boat. Because of the nature of the landscape, we found ourselves hiking the fingers of land on the east side of the island, while portaging our canoes, then paddling across the inlets. This proved to be tricky, since only my husband and my oldest son were strong enough to portage a canoe. While the two of them hefted the canoes, my middle son and I carried all of our gear, which was stored in five backpacks, while the youngest loaded himself up with all our life vests and waddled his way to the next shore. Some of the portages were over a mile, and we had to cross back and forth several times to transfer all the equipment. 

We never got out into Lake Superior itself, which can be too rough for canoes. If we had, we might have been able to look down at some of the shipwrecks that ring the island, grim monuments to rocky reefs and shifting fog. Some people scuba dive down to these wrecks.

We had a wonderful time on Isle Royale, but it was something that happened as we were leaving that
inspired me to write Perspective. The ferry had stopped near a rustic cabin that sat on the waterfront, and one of the sailors was handing mail and a box of groceries to a woman onshore. When I said that I'd like to own a cabin on the island, someone explained to me that it was impossible. When the island became a national park in 1940, some (but not all) of the people who owned land on the island were granted life leases. That allowed them to continue using their cabins until the grantee died. In 2000, it had been 60 years since those leases were granted, and most of the grantees were growing old. In the years since, they've died off, and the park service has taken control of the land. It made me wonder what it would have been like to be one of the families that lived on the island, and that wonder became the seed for a whole novel. 

A former high school and middle school social studies and English teacher, Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle school through adult readers. Perspective is her story about a girl who joins her fisherman father on Isle Royale during the Great Depression, and will be published in the fall of 2025.

Please forgive the quality of some of these pictures! The only copies I can find are behind glass and hanging on the wall. I couldn't figure out a way to get them without shadows and reflections. 

You can preorder a signed paperback copy of Perspective direct from the author here. It will be sent to you, along with some publication bling, when it is available. 

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