Grand Island, the wild island off Munising

Look out from Munising’s waterfront and you’ll see a long, wooded island filling the horizon: Grand Island, just half a mile offshore in Lake Superior. At more than thirteen thousand acres it’s nearly the size of a small town, but almost no one lives there. For most of the last century it was privately owned by an iron-mining company, until the U.S. Forest Service bought it in 1990 and turned it into a national recreation area, part of the Hiawatha National Forest.

Today it’s a place to disappear into for a day or a weekend. A small passenger ferry runs from a landing just west of town through the warmer months, though plenty of people paddle over by kayak when the lake is calm. There are no cars and no paved roads — just trails for hiking and mountain biking, white-sand beaches, sandstone cliffs, a couple of small inland lakes, and an old wooden lighthouse on the shore. Rustic campsites let you stay overnight under a sky full of stars.

The ferry runs from late spring into fall; you can find schedules and maps at grandislandup.com.