Travel-weary retirees yearning to collect every NPS stamp and trinket hump it to the North Cascades of Washington state and float out deep into the Gulf of America to visit the Dry Tortugas before they ever get up to our moose- and wolf-filled northern island.
Isle Royale is famous for being the least-visited national park in the lower 48, with only about 23,000 people visiting each year. But those that do make it there hang around. A new study by Rustic Pathways, a company that organizes student trips, shows that tourists actually spend more time at Isle Royale per visit than at any other national park.
The extreme remoteness of the place means that the average visitor spends 52.4 hours per visit at the park, compared with 17.8 at Yellowstone and 15.6 at the Grand Canyon. Between 2020 and 2024, the average visit time for all national parks was only 9.3 hours. Most people only have to pack a lunch for a day out.
It makes sense that visitors stick around on Isle Royale. Only two ferries bring visitors to and from the park from the Keweenaw, and the six-hour trip is often nauseating, given the high seas of Lake Superior. Though they offer Dramamine onboard, once you step off the ferry in the morning, you probably don’t want to get back on that evening.
And with 170 miles of trails leading to campsites and cabins to rent for a night, it’s not all that hard to stay overnight. You also can’t just buzz through the island to see the sights, given that wheeled devices aren’t allowed apart from wheelchairs. You’ve got to go on foot, and that takes a lot of time.
The island is only accessible by ferry from mid-May to late September or early October each year. Unlike the Grand Canyon, you need to be on a tight schedule to even get there. There is no big parking lot to drop your camper off if you want to go for a quick hike.
Another reason people linger? The digital isolation. Isle Royale is famous for having very limited cell service. We may all be glued to our phones, but the average Isle Royale visitor is offline for more than two days, a blessed respite I’m sure.
If you get up to our northern wilderness, you might get to read a novel by a campfire without an iPhone notification. I bet that for even the most hot-footed travelers, an extra day off email is an easy sell.
Mark Naida is editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
