Isle Royale National Park

If you want to get off the grid on a National Park trip – then this is the park for you! Isle Royale is located in Lake Superior and offers great opportunities to hike, kayak, boat, relax, and view moose and wolves. The park is home to the famous Wolf-Moose Study which has studied the co-existence of these two creatures and how the population of one species drives the other. This is a great park for those wanting to give overnight hiking a try as well given there really aren’t any dangerous predators for hikers to be concerned about. You can hike from Windigo to Rock Harbor in about 40 miles which can easily be done in 2-4 days depending on your pace. There are tons of campgrounds throughout the island as well giving you plenty of options.

When to Go

Given how remote this park is, you are going to be limited to the transportation options which mostly run between May and October. There are a few limited options starting in mid April, but the park is completely closed from November 1st to mid April each year due to the extreme winter weather in this part of the country.

How to Get Here

Even though this is a very remote park, you have several options for getting there. First, you have to decide if you are going to Windigo or Rock Harbor. If going to Windigo – that means you are going to be doing some overnight hiking/camping as there are not accommodations here. If you are looking for a more relaxed trip – you will be heading to Rock Harbor. To get to either can be a chore and you will also need to decide where you are coming from. You can choose one of three starting points to boat into the park: 1) Houghton, MI, 2) Copper Harbor, MI, or 3) Grand Portage, MN.

Houghton, MI: You can technically get to either Windigo or Rock Harbor from here on the Ranger III ($70 one way) and both trips will take about 6 hours one way. However, the Windigo trip only runs a few days each year. This is the only National Park operated boat and it currently travels to the park on Tuesdays and Fridays with returns on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Copper Harbor, MI: From here, you will take the Isle Royale Queen IV ($70 one way) and it will only take you to Rock Harbor. It is a shorter trip at 3.5 hours and runs almost every day during the summer. Therefore, this location offers you the most flexibility from a trip planning standpoint since you can arrive and depart on about any day.

Grand Portage, MN: There are a couple of options here depending on where you want to end up. You can take either the Voyageur II or the Sea Hunter III to Windigo ($76 one way) which will take about 2 hours. Or you can continue on the Voyageur II to Rock Harbor ($94 one way) after its stop in Windigo for a total trip of 7 hours. The Sea Hunter III runs about 5 days a week while the Voyageur II runs Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday with return trips on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday for the majority of the summer.

There are also a couple seaplane options leaving from either Hancock, MI or Grand Marais, MN which will cost somewhere between $330-$380 round trip to either Windigo or Rock Harbor and also be way faster than boating in. This also adds flexibility as these planes operate every day the park is open.

Trip Length

This really depends on which transportation option you choose and what you plan on doing in the park. Many of the boating options above only run on certain days of the week. For example, we travelled to Rock Harbor from Grand Portage on the Voyageur II arriving on a Saturday. This meant our minimum stay was 3 nights with a return trip on Tuesday which is what we chose. This gave us enough time to do some day hiking and boat tours around the area. If you are planning on hiking the length of the island like many people do – you just need to consider your transportation options above to make sure your plans align with a trip in and a trip out of the park.

Where to Stay

This is pretty simple. You are either going to camp for the duration of your stay or you are going to stay at Rock Harbor Lodge. We didn’t have camping gear with us on this particular trip, so our only option was Rock Harbor Lodge which will easily run ~$300 per night during the peak summer months. It is nice though as we had a deck overlooking Lake Superior which offered some relaxing evenings.

What to Do

Many people come to this part to be dropped off at Windigo so they can hike the ~40 miles across the island to Rock Harbor. This is a great option where as you are likely to see plenty of moose and maybe a wolf or two. You’ll also have great views of Lake Superior and several lakes within the island on your journey. This is something we will certainly consider doing on our next trip to Isle Royale – but we chose to hang around Rock Harbor for our three days in the park. As mentioned above, we took the Voyageur II from Grand Portage to Rock Harbor which was about a 7 hour journey. We did get out to stretch our legs quickly at Windigo which included a briefing from a park ranger on what to expect at the park. Besides that – we were sitting, sleeping, or walking around the boat which doesn’t have many amenities to keep you busy for 7 hours.

Once we arrived at Rock Harbor, we checked in and headed to our room which to our surprise had a great view of Lake Superior and a deck to sit on and enjoy a few adult beverages during sunset. There is one restaurant at Rock Harbor and we ate all of our meals there – breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three straight days – but the food was great and we never got tired of it. We chose Rock Harbor over hiking from Windigo because not only could we still do some hiking – but we also had several boat trips in mind to more remote areas of the park aboard the MV Sandy which is docked right outside the restaurant at Rock Harbor.

We decided to start with some hiking on our first full day (Wednesday) in the park. There are several options in the Rock Harbor area, but here are a couple we would recommend:

Mount Franklin Trail – 10 miles RT, Moderate, 5 hours

This is the longest day hike available from Rock Harbor – but it is completely worth it and you will actually get to experience three different Rock Harbor trails along the way. You can take either the Rock Harbor or Tobin Harbor trails from Rock Harbor Lodge at the beginning of the hike as both will eventually connect with Mount Franklin Trail. We chose to go out on Tobin Harbor Trail which offered great views of Tobin Harbor along the way. This one of the best kayaking spots in the park and there were several people taking advantage of that while we were walking by. Once you reach Mount Franklin Trail – you will start to ascend about 700 feet over a two mile stretch which will end with you jumping onto the Greenstone Ridge trail (which is the main trail crossing the entire island) for the final approach to the overlook atop Mount Franklin. From here you can see Canada along with incredible views of Lake Superior. It’s a great spot to eat your lunch and relax for a while. On your way back, you will descend the Mount Franklin Trail to the Rock Harbor Trail which loops back to the Rock Harbor Lodge. Along the way, you will come across a short spur trail to Suzy’s save which offers an inland cave/arch which was either formed when the water was higher or the land was lower about 4,000 years ago. You will get good views of Lake Superior along this trail as well and while we didn’t see any moose – we had heard they frequently show themselves on this trail.

Scoville Point Trail – 4.2 miles RT, Easy, 2 hours

This trail offers a stark contrast between the mostly tree covered island and the open coast which is constantly demonstrating the power of Lake Superior. We took this trail after breakfast on our second day. It had rained a bit the night before and the wind was up a little bit which added to the dramatic difference in this area compared to our hike the previous day. The power of Lake Superior’s waves out on the point was pretty crazy and we can only imagine what it would be like during a larger storm.

After our morning hike, we had some lunch and then waited at the dock for our planned afternoon boat trip to Passage Island which includes a 2 mile hike to a lighthouse. However, due to the rain the night before – it was determine the lake was too rough out by Passage Island for the MV Sandy and we were re-routed to Edisen Fishery & Rock Harbor Lighthouse. While initially disappointed, we knew this was our only chance at a boat trip while on the island since we were leaving the next day – so we went with it.

Edisen Fishery & Rock Harbor Lighthouse Tour – 4 hours ($38 per person in 2018)

This turned out to be a really cool tour even though it wasn’t the one we initially thought we would be taking. You’ll spend an hour or so on the MV Sandy headed over to the Fishery where you will get to explore the grounds and have questions answered by park volunteers who live there during the peak season. Once you are done there, you’ll hike about 0.25 miles up to the Rock Harbor Lighthouse which was built in 1855 and is the oldest lighthouse in the park. You can climb up to the top of the lighthouse and take some pictures of the island and Lake Superior as well. Once you are done here, you get to walk three quarters of a mile or so over to the Wolf-Moose Study which was absolutely fascinating. Researchers live here and spend their time scouring the island for moose bones which can be studied to determine the health of both the wolf and moose population as it is reliant on each other. This was certainly the most moose bones we had ever seen in one place. Once we were done exploring this area, we headed back to the boat which took us back to Rock Harbor Lodge.

The MV Sandy offers several tours and if you want to experience them all – it is best to stay through the middle of the week. You could actually take all 4 boat tours if you were staying in the lodge just Tuesday & Wednesday each week. Given our Saturday arrival and Tuesday departure – we were only able to get this one boat tour in. We will certainly keep this in mind for our next trip to the park!