Cruising Isle Royale
 August 2003
Page 6

       We turned into Huginnin and McGinty Coves along the way just to see for ourselves how much shelter they might provide along the otherwise twenty-some miles of Isle Royale’s bluff southwest shore.  Not much, as our Superior Way pointed out.  McGinty does present a magnificent bluff wall of rock something like a hundred and fifty feet high.
         In the passage between Thompson Island and the southwest end of Isle Royale we found the wreck of the AMERICA, a steamship that ran onto the rocks and sank in a severe storm in 1928.  A pair of small buoys, joined by a float line, mark the bow of the wreck, clearly visible just three feet below the surface, jutting upward at a sharp angle from the rock upon which she rests.
         We had studied an exhibit telling about the AMERICA in the National park office at Windigo the afternoon we first arrived.   Much beloved throughout the region, she had served as one of the most viable connections between Duluth the North Shore, and Isle Royale.


Grand Portage as it once was in the mid-1700's
From: The Illustrated Voyager by Howard Sivertson
Lake Superior Port Cities, Inc., Duluth, MN

          Our return to Windigo was a full two days early.  Having originally allowed two days for poor weather, even advising a Park Ranger that we might head for Grand Portage from some point up the west side of the Island, here we were, motoring up Washington Harbor to Windigo again just five days after we had departed.  Later that afternoon we went out on a short trail that took us to a “Moose Exclosure”, several acres secured against entry by moose, by a chain-link fence for the purpose of studying the effects of grazing.  The difference between the Balsam Fir on either side of the fence was dramatic.   
         Our weather throughout the week had been excellent.  After the boisterous welcome, Lake Superior had given True North a break, after all, and we were satisfied that we had made the most of our opportunity.  Of course the wind for our return to Grand Portage was exactly opposite from the trip out, so we let the Yammerhammer take us home at the usual seven to eight mph.



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