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Isle Royale National Park
Isle Royale National Park [1] is a United States National Park comprised of Isle Royale and the surrounding waters and small islands, a wilderness preserve in northwest Lake Superior. It's easily identified on maps of the Great Lakes: Lake Superior resembles the profile of a snarling wolf; Isle Royale is the eye. Although it's closer to Ontario, Canada, or even Minnesota, USA, it's part of the state of Michigan. Its French name might lead you to pronounce it "eel roy-AL", but the common pronunciation is the very midwestern "ile ROY-ul".
Culture and History
Isle Royale is currently a wilderness preserve first, a sanctuary for those seeking to experience it second, and a travel destination third. Although it accommodates all of these uses, that's the order of priority they take. So wildlife gets the run of the island, and human visitors are generally restricted to established trails and accessible lakes, with leave-no-trace camping protocols in effect. Modern conveniences and comforts are very limited; away from the small ports on either end of the island, "running water" means "a creek", and only "outhouse" pit toilets are available. (Many of the more accessible ones are stocked with toilet paper, but bring your own or be prepared to improvise.)
Lake Superior winters close the park from November through mid-April, with limited access before Memorial Day and after Labor Day; Isle Royale is the only U.S. National Park Service park to shut down altogether for the winter. Because of this, along with its geographic isolation and challenging ruggedness, it receives fewer visitors in a year (17,500 in 2005) than many national parks endure in a day. Those visitors stay a remarkable average of 4-5 days each (even counting day-trippers), but it still has one of the lowest visitors-per-square-mile figures outside of the huge Alaskan parks. Which is, of course, a large part of its appeal. And it leaves these visitors wanting more; with the NPS's highest return-visit rate.
History
Over four millennia ago, Native Americans began visiting Isle Royale to dig for copper, to tap maple trees for sugar, and to fish. Since Europeans came to the area, it's been host to whitefish fisheries, a series of unprofitable copper mining efforts, and a resort community around 1900. In the 1920s, Detroit News journalist Albert Stoll Jr. visited Isle Royale, saw what commercial exploitation was beginning to do to undermine the wilderness, and campaigned for its protection; a plaque in his honor was later placed near the tip of Scoville Point. Isle Royale National Park was established by Congress in 1931, and the last of the land de-privatized in 1940 (with a few of the land owners given lifetime leases). The archipelago was designated a Wilderness Area in 1976, and named an International Biosphere Reserve in 1980.
Landscape
The archipelago (consisting of Isle Royale itself and dozens of smaller islands) is the edge of a geologic fault which pushed up from the lake floor and was scoured by ice-age glaciers into a long, ridged island, with lakes and inlets of Lake Superior filling in low points between some of the ridges. The south sides of these ridges and the south lakeshore tend to be more gently sloped; the north sides and lakeshore more steep. Crossing from one side of the island to the other isn't usually a great distance, but because of the ridges can involve a lot of climbing and descending.
The island and its ridges run roughly WSW-to-ENE end to end, but for informal navigational purposes they're usually described as if they ran directly west-to-east (a notion reinforced by the orientation of the park service's official map). When using a compass, keep in mind the island's true orientation. The Greenstone Ridge runs the length of the island, with a trail along most of its crest. Isle Royale itself is 45 miles (74 km) long and 9 miles (14 km) at its widest, with an area of about 205 mi² (530 km²). The highest point on the island is Mount Desor at 1394 feet (425 m) above sea level – about 800 feet (245 m) above lake level – with several other spots along the Greenstone above 1200 feet (365 m) in elevation.
Flora and fauna
The island is mostly forested in a mixture of boreal and northern hardwood ecosystems, with a selection of conifer (spruce, fir, pine) and deciduous (birch, aspen, maple, ash) trees. Past human habitation has left some apple trees behind. Marsh vegetation is more common in the west, but found in low spots everywhere. A wide variety of orchids and wildflowers can be found throughout the island. Berries grow wild; blueberries can be found on open ridge tops, and thimbleberries (with maple-like leaves bigger than your hand; white flowers in early summer, red berries in late summer) grow seemingly everywhere.
The island is far enough from the mainland and small enough in area to limit the variety of animals on it; there are no bears, deer, raccoons, nor cats of any kind. Around 1900, moose introduced themselves to the island, presumably swimming from Ontario. Wolves followed later, crossing increasingly rare safe ice bridges in 1948 and 1967. As a closed environment, the island serves as a prime field study of the relationship between prey and predator. Because the wolf population is descended from two small packs, the island also demonstrates the effects of inbreeding on their viability. Both populations have gone through booms and busts due to weather, disease, food availability, and predation (the past several summers' heat has brought the February 2007 moose population way down to 385, with 21 wolves trying to subsist on the survivors), but they still endure.
Other common mammals are red foxes (filling the scavenger niche, especially around camp sites), beavers (in inland lakes and ponds), red squirrels (everywhere), snowshoe hares, and otters. Loons, eagles, and ospreys nest on the island, and a large variety of songbirds, woodpeckers, and aquatic birds (especially gulls and ducks) will be seen. Painted turtles, garter snakes, and a few varieties of amphibians are common. Northern pike are plentiful in most of the inland lakes, along with varieties of trout, perch, walleye, and other sport fish. Mosquitoes, no-see-ums, and a few varieties of biting flies are unfortunately abundant, though the extent of these nuisances varies year to year, by season, and from one locale to another. Insect repellent is essential, and a face net will provide welcome relief when the bugs seem intent on driving you crazy even when your bug dope prevents them from landing. There are bees on the island as well.
Climate
At a latitude of 48
Ask for advice at the Isle Royale National Park travel forum
This page was last edited at 18:50, on 13 December 2008 by Wikitravel user Jonathan 784. Based on work by scotty bowman, Todd VerBeek, Stacy Hall, Nick Roux, Colin Jensen and Ryan Holliday, Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel and others.
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