I know it's not Boundary Waters but I think we're cool here in the "On Foot" forum.

We have booked a backpacking trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for mid July. We're taking four days to do the main trail through the park - used to be called the Lakeshore Trail but now it's part of the NCT and they seem to have dropped the local name. We're parking at the east end and have a shuttle reservation to get us to the west end, then we'll hike back to the car. I reserved campsites to put our days between 9 and 13 miles each.

Anybody done it? Any advice? Looks like they have bear boxes (!!!) but I'll probably use my Ursack anyway, what's a few extra ounces?

Funny that technically this is the same trail as the 40 miles we did on the Kek a few weeks back!

I'm jealous. We were supposed to hike the trail in early June. After the hike we were going to hang out in Munising for a day and do a kayak trip the day after that. Obviously the hike didn't happen. In hindsight we got lucky. On the day we would have been a little over halfway was the day the remnants of the hurricane went through. I've been told the winds and rain were relentless. The entire area was left without power. Then the day we were to do the kayak tour they were calling for 8 foot waves on the lake. I guess there is always next year.

I once paddled the shore in a canoe from Miners Castle to the point just before Chapel Beach, it was calm up to that although the tour boats created a challenge. The first one I pointed my canoe into their wave and the crest came within inches of the top as the center of the canoe sat in the trough. I was in my Jensen18 solo. After that I quartered it. I turned back, on the way back it was getting "exciting". I encountered a group of kayaks who I got varying types of looks from.

I am hoping to get up to Grand Island to paddle around it in my kayak and maybe do some camping/hiking too.

We are cool over here on the hiking forum! You guys let me post about my Superior Hiking Trail adventures all the time (thanks).

This is a bucket list item for sure! That area looks gorgeous! URSAKS are fairly light, and you probably need to put your food in a stuff sack anyways!

I haven't been to PRNLS since 1979 and sounds like it is a lot busier. There were no tour boats and very few kayaks anywhere on the Great Lakes at that time. I started going in 1972 right after it was designated. There were no designated campsites except the few barely developed ones that had been part of the State Forest before the feds acquired it. I would hitch-hike there regularly from Green Bay for a long weekend or for weeks at a time in the summer.

Best hike I did was in 1974 starting at Rapid River on the Bay du Noc-Grand Island Trail and picking up the railroad grade that went from Marquette to the paper mill at Munising. Only one train a day would come by hauling pulp and moving real slow. The grade went through some wonderful swamps that would be inaccessible except in the winter. I remember walking up on the stopped train to find the engineer trying to coax a 30 inch snapping turtle off the tracks. Its head was about as big around as my thigh. We cut a stout sapling and poked it until it clamped down on it and then dragged it off the tracks. The engineer rewarded me for my timely assistance with some whiskey from his flask and a couple of Lucky Strikes which we enjoyed in the shade of the locomotive. He gave me a lift to just short of town. I hiked out to Sand Point and stayed on the beach there after the office closed down.

My hike took me the whole length of PRNLS and continued on the shore all the way to Whitefish Point. I slept through a night of storms on the front porch of the Au Sable Light Station. I had some cold swims to get across the Two Hearted River and a few others. These days that is the route of the North Country Trail I believe. It was a wonderful adventure for sure and I still have vivid memories of the hike.

I would like to revisit that area again. Lake Superior is still a magnet for me.