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Subject:  And now you know, the rest of the story... |
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Author: Government |
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Date Posted: 18:32:47 06/28/05 Tue In reply to: Pathfinder 's message, "Re: Welcome Back "Lost Islands Expedition"" on 22:10:45 06/27/05 Mon Well, everyone knows how much fun the 5' confused and breaking waves with a 25-30 knot headwind were, so I'll skip to what the rest of you don't know... On days 3 & 4 Muskrat and I landed on Gull, which was 'fragrant' due to the flying rats, er, cormorants. We did notice many jigangous carp. These things looked bigger around than Red Squirrel. Freaking huge. It made me wonder what could happen if the Asian Carp ever get into the Great Lakes... After we left Gull, we landed near the St. Martin Lighthouse (abandoned, boarded, private) for a break. Then we did the ~5 mile open water cross to 'the Rock' as the locals refer to it. The Rock Island lighthouse was an excellent restoration, possibly as good as I've seen, and a tad 'touristy'. The view from the top of the lighthouse is spectacular. Plus you can keep an eye out for freighters. By the way, the primary shipping channel from Green Bay to the main lake runs between St. Martin Island and Rock Island. Anyone on the St. Marys River trip knows what happens when a 1000’ freighter cruises by at 15 knots. Don’t leave your kayak anywhere near the water to walk up to the lighthouse. On the north side of Rock Island there were 80' dolomite cliffs jutting up from the water. They were indeed impressive looking up from my little kayak. We didn't have time to explore them, but the locals tell me there are som pillar-like structures from past wave action to the south of the lighthouse. Maybe next time. Around the corner was an extremely well protected bay. At the back of the bay was a boathouse. Not just any boathouse, but the chief building accomplishment of the Icelander that settled the island back in the day. This guy made a fortune building electrical components (transformers?) and bought the island. He brought in 5 stone masons from Iceland who worked for 5 years to build the boathouse. It is awesome. There were several more structures and some decent stories to tell of the place. The whole chebang is run as a Wisconsin State Park & is remarkably well preserved and less touristy than I feared. I wish I had a couple more days to explore the area, there are apparently some nice hikes there. And you can get provisions (Pathfinder, read this as SMOKES) via a 1-mile paddle to Washington Island. On the downside, you have to BUY firewood, thus preventing our typical evening FBET signal fire to the orbiting international space station. And by the way, there were plenty of good tent sites & no bugs at the $86 campsite that all of you subsidized for us (thanks again guys). Overall, Rock was definitely the most interesting island we visited last week. Of particular note to future expeditions… I noticed a couple mini-caves near the lighthouse where somebody quarried rock for the lighthouse. These “caves” don’t extend far, perhaps 25’. However, the boathouse must have consumed an immense amount of rock. If we can find where that rock was quarried, we might find something really neat that you don’t see when you take the State Park guided tour. It was remarkable how easy it was to paddle to the Rock. 4 hours of calm water paddling to get there from Poverty, and 5.5 hours to get back to Fairport. We had a 10 knot crosswind and light chop on the way back. If Muskrat ever comes again you’ll have to ask her about the time she was on all the local news channels, as viewed from a Canadian Coast Guard helicopter during a “high drama” rescue of her paddling party somewhere near Pelee Island. Red Squirrel nailed it, I know it was 'an intense experience' for lots of us on day 1, but the whole trip was a ton of fun for me. Setting the Geocache in the way Pathfinder did was really fun to take part in. I hope we can prepare ourselves more thoroughly and finish this trip in a future expedition, there are many things yet to explore on Rock Island. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: And now you know, the rest of the story... | Grapenuts | 11:31:21 06/29/05 Wed |
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