Moose

Grand Portage National Monument

/ bigdiff / 1 Comment

[Update: Blackwell National Historic Site in Texas is now officially a national park unit.]

The photo is from the moose exhibit upstairs at the visitor center. I failed to photograph a bald eagle flying right in front of the reconstructed fort, which includes a great hall, kitchen, warehouse, lookout and wooden palisade. The monument is surrounded by Anishinaabe (Ojibwe/Chippewa) land, and the tribe co-manages the unit, a first for the NPS. I stayed at the casino to catch an early ferry from Grand Portage, and I had a delicious ‘lunker’ (big fish) for dinner. From the dock, you can see Isle Royale in the distance, and there are various demonstrations of the fur trading life during the summer season.

Traders wanted access to the western rivers and lakes, and the easiest way to get there was to carry their canoes on the ~10 mile Grand Portage Trail around some impassable waterfalls (including Minnesota’s largest) on the Pigeon River at the border with Canada. At a site called Fort Charlotte, the voyageurs entered the Pigeon River—now the US-Canada border—and continued with shorter portages upstream on the Athabasca, English & Saskatchewan Rivers. They would pass through what’s now Voyageurs National Park, Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, and deep up into the Canadian Rockies to the Athabasca, Great Slave, and Winnipeg Lakes. The trail carried beaver and other pelts, typically trapped by natives, in 90 pound packs from inland Canada down to Montreal (skipping the polar bears around Hudson Bay), bound for global markets in Europe, Russia and China. Vast fortunes were made wiping out the abundance of our wildlife.

Isle Royale National Park

/ bigdiff / 2 Comments

This is now my favorite park for wildlife. I was lucky to get a photo of this moose and her calf on the 1 mile Nature Trail in Windigo just before my boat left. Despite seeing loons, mergansers, swans, geese, and even a bushy tailed fox parading near my shelter on Washington Creek, I had neglected to take any decent wildlife photos, so until these two approached me, all I had was one photo of two ducks: a paradox.

I hiked a dozen miles and enjoyed the pitcher plants and boardwalks through the swampy areas and the mossy boulders on the north shore. The island is larger than I imagined, so be sure to download the park map in advance and charge your phone. This Biosphere is one of the least visited National Parks but most re-visited. Many folks hike the length over several days, and early in the season there were many volunteers hiking off-trail doing scientific research on wolf-moose predator-prey. A few were carrying a canoe for inland lakes. It’s an idyllic place, with hours of silence and solitude, a wonderful trip into the wilderness.

Isle Royale is in Lake Superior, and the shortest ferry ride is a couple hours from Minnesota to Windigo. The island is part of Michigan, and there are also ferries from the Keweenaw Peninsula in Upper Michigan to Rock Harbor. Most visitors are experienced hikers who backpack to their campgrounds, and it’s 40 miles between Windigo and Rock Harbor. Some arrive by private boat, and several campgrounds have docks. Lodgings are limited to Rock Harbor and a couple cabins in Windigo, and rooms are both very expensive and typically sold out many months in advance. The season roughly runs from early June to early September, so it’s a good idea to plan your trip a year in advance.