Isle Royale, the national park almost nobody visits

Here’s a fact that surprises even lifelong Michiganders: the big wilderness island far out in Lake Superior, closer to Minnesota and Canada than to the rest of Michigan, is part of Keweenaw County. Isle Royale National Park is a roadless archipelago of one large island and hundreds of smaller ones, and it is the least-visited national park in the Lower 48 — most years it draws fewer people in a whole season than popular parks see on a single busy day.

That isn’t for lack of beauty. It’s because the place is genuinely hard to reach: no cars, no roads, no bridge. You get there only by ferry or seaplane, and the park closes entirely from fall through spring. Ferries run from Houghton (about six hours across the lake) and from Copper Harbor (about three and a half), landing at Rock Harbor or Windigo. Once there, it’s all on foot or by paddle — more than 160 miles of trails and dozens of backcountry campgrounds, with nearly the whole island set aside as wilderness.

Isle Royale is most famous for its wolves and moose. The moose swam or crossed ice to the island long ago; the wolves arrived over an ice bridge in the late 1940s, and the decades-long study of how the two populations rise and fall together is the longest-running predator-and-prey study in the world. You’re unlikely to see a wolf — they’re shy and few — but moose are common, and the loons, foxes, and beavers are everywhere. It’s not a drive-through park or a day-trip-on-a-whim park. It’s a place you commit to, and the reward is a kind of quiet and wildness that’s getting harder to find anywhere.