Some notes: I frequently wore a head net and bug spray from day one. Mosquitoes often existed, and so did what TC called "eyeball-targeting" insects. Bigger than gnats. No black flies prior to departure on June 12. Next time I'll include a notecard in my pack for questions for rangers and ...

It being a beautiful day for a walk in the woods, I day-hiked the Huginnin Loop to visit TC. She had been testing the use of moose berries in her twig stove, with results that mean I'm trying them on my next visit to moose berry country. (An earlier hiker called them something else, and my use of mo...

A couple of items were at the forefront of our thoughts come morning. First was the video of Wolfgang, which a ranger identified as a black morph of a red fox. And the second was books! I started with Minong: The Good Place: Ojibwe and Isle Royale . One of my ISRO dreams is to rent a canoe (or kayak...

It being a beautiful day for a walk in the woods, we headed out on the trail. Had some ideas not taken hold, in retrospect I would have preferred to stay another day at North Lake Desor. These ideas led to the idea of walking this stretch of trail (12.9 miles) all the way to Windigo, in one day. Thi...

This is a long way from recent, and it's speculative: When I walked the E Chickenbone trail about a month ago, signage from last year warning about blooms was still posted. It was very careworn and frazzled: clearly a relic of the previous season. I wonder if that's the source of the report you men...

Was it always clear that the worst outcome was becoming decidedly damp, as opposed to being swept away/swept under? Because I worried about the sweeping outcomes. Yes. I would characterize the stream flow on that day as brisk but not overwhelming. That was one of the days that I'm glad I wasn't hik...

It being a beautiful day for a walk in the woods, we headed for North Lake Desor. Hoosier Hiking headed out in the same direction. Once they left us, we didn't see them again until North Lake Desor. This section is easily the most difficult section of the Minong Ridge Trail. Up and down, down and up...

It being a beautiful day for hanging out at Little Todd Harbor, we did. I made some solar prints. We explored around the west end of the cove. Later, two hikers came in, who turned out to be the proprietors of Hoosier Hiking and are on ISRO for a month. After settling in, they joined us around our c...

It being a beautiful day for a walk in the woods, we headed for Little Todd Harbor. Disturbed one moose, perhaps a yearling, feeding off the side of the trail. Found my first morel ever—TC had already found one. I walked up behind her and said "I found a morel" just in time to see an all-b...

The shelter at Todd Harbor opened up, so we moved in. In fact, everyone but us moved on. In the morning, three hikers passed through from the west, and two others passed through from the east. Later, two others joined us in the campground. It was a beautiful day at Todd Harbor—a good day for explori...

Our fellow hiker wasn't feeling any better this morning, so I canvassed the other hikers and found no one who was getting picked up by VII today. Fortunately, the wolf/moose study interns were still in camp, and they were gracious enough to use their satellite communication devices to send out a cou...

Woke up on Isle Royale for the first time this year! Last evening during campfire a red fox showed up, and it appeared again this morning when I went down to the dock to collect water. And like last evening, small eyeball-targeting insects also appeared, making use of my head net desirable. It being...

This year's visit saw the return of TC as my hiking partner. She was good enough to humor my desire to make time to visit Grand Portage National Monument . I spent a couple of hours wandering around the Heritage Center (which still requires face masks inside), the Ojibwe village re-creation, the can...

Got off the island at Windigo yesterday. Some of what I'm about to say will end up in the trip report. I ended up spending the last four nights at Washington Creek, so I had a chance to observe the rangers a bit more than usual. At first glance, I was disappointed that some long-time rangers were no...

It was toilet paper! Thank you for satisfying my curiosity! The webcam caught a small animal (pine marten or squirrel maybe) carrying white object, stopping on rock, then jumping off rock and dropping white object. Presumably the critter picked up the tp from where some hiker left it nearby. Maybe!...