If you desire some privacy, the far western shelter (I believe #1) is kind of off on it's own. I watched moose feeding across from this shelter years back.

Rangers come and go. Some rangers stay for years, others move on after one year. And don't discount the dramatic increase in visitor numbers over the past fifteen years. Island visitation in 2007 was about 11,800 people. In 2021, it was 20,100 people. That's a huge increase that's having a definite ...

Did you see any piles of snow laying around?

Screen grab from about 9:30 EDT, 5/17/2022. Find the moose.

Here's one from 1968. Rock Harbor Lighthouse.

My first visit was 1968. I have some slides (remember those?) someplace. Need to find them.

Go to the University of Wisconsin website (below). Once today's map appears, click on the State of Michigan for a view of the Great Lakes area, then click on 250m resolution.

https://ge.ssec.wisc.edu/modis-today/

It was many years back, but we walked the trail counter-clockwise. Honestly, I can't recall terrain being an issue. Great trail though, I most liked the mile or so that you parallel the Lake Superior shoreline. On the north side of a ridge, the trail is largely in the shadows and cool and damp, with...

How about these tracks? This is from February 7th. My first guess was moose, but they have a snowshoe look to them. Could be, the winter research team got to the island on January 22nd. Maybe somebody went for a snowshoe hike.

This is a screen capture from this morning, 3/4/2022. Wonder what kind of critter made these tracks?

Remarkably detailed MODIS imagery from 2/25/2022. Ice, of varying thickness, everywhere.

MODIS imagery from 2/19.

As for bugs around Memorial Day weekend, I spent time at Rock Harbor three or four years ago the week following Memorial Day, and hiked the Greenstone up to Mt. Franklin one afternoon. Absolutely no bugs anywhere along the Lake Superior shore (too cool), but I did find both mosquitoes and black flie...

MODIS imagery from February 13th. Prolonged sub-zero weather has made for a lot of ice.

Thanks for the replies. We’re planning to paddle to Menagerie Island when we start out at Malone Bay and thought this may be a good addition once we make it east to end the trip on. We’ll see how weather goes and how distracted we get exploring. I have paddled over to Menagerie. Rocky coast, and ha...