Rock Harbor — Isle Royale is the most remote place in Michigan. There are no public roads, no hospitals, and essentially no cellphone service. A six-hour ferry ride away on the Ranger III from Houghton, it’s as close to off-the-grid as you can get in America in 2025.
So, who goes to Isle Royale?
We left Houghton at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday in August. Standing with my forearms resting on the railing, I met a a couple of friendly young people. A brother and sister, high school age. They were on their way to Isle Royale for a four-day visit with their mom and dad. It was their parents’ idea, and their first time there.
There are long golden wood benches along the side of the Ranger III. I sat there watching the Keweenaw coastline disappear into the haze from the Canadian wildfires when Josh sat down next to me.
He’s from Georgia. He and his fiancé were going to Isle Royale for the first time. He proposed to her a few weeks prior on top of a mountain in New Hampshire. They love hiking and have been to a lot of the national parks out west. He works in sales. Going backpacking and getting off the grid is the way he relaxes, and how he unplugs from the chaotic world of his iPhone.
He said he also likes planning. Mapping out all the steps, charting their hike, making sure they have everything they need. They were staying on the island for two days.
Waiting to order food at the kitchen was a middle-aged woman with her daughter. They were coming to Isle Royale to visit one of her friends who works on the island all summer. Behind her were a group of young college-age guys also going for their first time.
Sitting in a booth just across from me on the lower deck was a sleeping hipster with a long auburn beard, black T-shirt, stocky arms covered in tattoos, and a sage Carhartt baseball cap over a shaved head. Slouched in the deep chairs near the bow were a couple guys who checked fishing poles as they were boarding. They were already wearing tall boots and camouflage.
About four hours into the journey, I met a young man in his 20s from Cleveland. He had long hair under a black beanie and was shooting pictures with a DSLR. Outside, leaning against the railing, I asked him if he was going to the island to take photos.
“Kind of.” He was supposed to come with a friend, but she got sick at the last minute. He considered cancelling but came to the conclusion that not only would it be a waste of a trip, but that going alone might be really nice. He told me he wants to go to every national park. Isle Royale will be the ninth he’s visited thus far.
He thinks our world is too busy and that we don’t have any time to think anymore, that some people are uncomfortable with their thoughts. But he isn’t one of them. That’s why he likes camping and hiking. That’s where he is able to shut the world out. He was planning to camp for four days, and this was his first time on the island.
Just as Isle Royale was coming into view an older woman asked me if she was in my way as I was snapping a photo. She was going to Isle Royale with her husband. He visited the island a couple times in the 1980s, but this was her first time. They brought kayaks and tents. They were kayaking from Rock Harbor to Caribou Island, then camping there for three days. They used to go tent camping all the time, but they recently got a camper. She said this trip is kind of about her proving to herself that she isn’t old yet.
Isle Royale’s visitors hail from a mix of disparate subcultures. Crunchy Patagonia-clad hikers at home in Ann Arbor most of the year; tattooed hipsters with PhDs in craft beer and veganism; normal families with teenage sons and daughters; rugged outdoorsmen bringing boats and rods who also, most likely, have a strong gun collection somewhere; and older couples staying at the lodge.
So, again, who goes to Isle Royale?
There’s no easy answer. All these people are so different from one another. They come from different places with generally different ideas about politics, society, life, music, art, religion, and everything else that’s left after that. And yet, they share something in common. But what is it?
It’s a call toward nature, obviously. But there is something else too. Because Isle Royale isn’t just nature. The woods outside behind your backyard qualifies as nature. It’s easy to get nature. It isn’t easy to get Isle Royale.
To get on a ferry for six hours so you can camp, kayak, fish, hike, and live off the grid without electricity or running water on an island where there are moose and wolves, where if you break your leg miles away from a ranger station you are up a crick without a paddle (or any cell service) points to some kind of deeper urge, or need.
The people who go to Isle Royale are trying to get away from something. The merciless grind of the sales world, the frantic pace of life that prevents us from being alone with our thoughts, the feeling of growing old, and a world that draws our kids away from us rather than toward us. No iPad, no YouTube, no distraction. Just life.
All of them are dissatisfied with our modern civilization in some way. They may articulate their dissatisfaction with different language, or they may not think of it like that at all. They may not want to leave it forever, but they do want to leave it a little. So they come to Isle Royale.
Sitting in my room at Rock Harbor Lodge with the lights out and the windows open, I listened to the waves lapping against the rocky shore a few feet away. Not a single light shone on the horizon. The pines had disappeared into the night. Only a dim orange moon hung in the sky, smoldering above the dark water.
I sat there looking out my window, thinking about all the campers out there scattered across the island in the middle of the black wilderness, laying in their sleeping bags, falling asleep, listening to the sounds of the forest around them. No electricity, no cellphone service, no cars, and no roads.
Safe from the modern world.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.
