Isle Royale National Park

Isle Royale sits in the north of Lake Superior, closer to Canada than to the rest of Michigan, and it is the least visited national park in the contiguous states, largely because reaching it takes the better part of a day by boat and there is no road, no vehicle and no shop once you arrive. What there is: about two hundred and seventy kilometres of trail through boreal forest, a coastline of coves and inland lakes, and the longest-running predator-prey study in the world, tracking the island's wolves and moose since the 1950s. Backpackers walk the Greenstone Ridge end to end in about a week; kayakers work the shoreline. The park closes entirely from November to mid-April.

The landscape

• The Greenstone Ridge Trail - the end-to-end backpacking route along the island's spine.
• Moose and wolves - the subject of the longest predator-prey study anywhere.
• The coves and inland lakes - paddling the shoreline and portaging inland.
• Rock Harbour and Windigo - the two small settlements at either end.

When to go

June to September is the season and the park is closed from November to mid-April, unusually for a national park. July and August are warmest and buggiest; September is cooler with fewer insects. Ferries run to a limited schedule and are weather-dependent.

Good to know

Getting there takes most of a day each way and ferries are cancelled in Superior storms, which can strand you at either end. There are no shops, so all food comes with you, and campsites are first-come. Black flies and mosquitoes in early summer are genuinely severe. Wolves are almost never seen; moose usually are.

Nearby

Houghton and Copper Harbor in Michigan and Grand Portage in Minnesota are the ferry ports.

Key facts