We backpacked across Isle Royale National Park: The LEAST visited in the lower 48!

For the next week, we're going to be backpacking over 50 miles all the way across Michigan's Isle Royale National Park. Located on Lake Superior, this park spans almost 900 square miles with one major island and 450 smaller islands that surround it. Here you'll find pristine forests, countless lakes, wildlife, rocky shorelines, and lots of camping opportunities. But with its remote location and vast wilderness, it's a place that not many In 2025, it was the least visited U.S. National Park in the lower 48, with around 29,000 visitors. To put that into perspective, the 10 most popular parks in the U.S. had at least 3 million visitors each. So we couldn't be more excited or grateful to be some of the lucky few that get to experience this special place, especially alongside some of our closest friends. Joining us on this backpacking trip are Jen and Elliot from Show and Joe and Katie and Joey from Katie and Joe on the Go. We have had some fun adventures together all over the U.S. and this one is going to be full of highs, lows, oh they're terrible, they're absolutely terrible, and some unexpected surprises. Go, go, go, go, go! But before we can hit the trail, we first have to get to the island. A big reason why Isle Royale is one of the least visited parks in the U.S. is because it's pretty difficult to get to. There are multiple ferry routes you can do from both Minnesota and Michigan, which have varying schedules, go to multiple parts of the island, and range in length of time and price. Or you can take a seaplane from Hubble, Michigan, which is 45 minutes to either Rock Harbor or Windigo. Yesterday we flew into Minneapolis, rented a car, and made the over six hour drive to Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. And to get the rest of the way, we decided to take a seaplane. It is the most expensive option, but it'll get us there much quicker. Plus, we have never been on a seaplane, so it's going to be a new experience for us. I am pretty terrified of small planes, so I am a tad nervous for the flight, but I'm mostly excited because it is a beautiful day, and I think it's going to be such a cool way to get to see the area and the island. And I'm just telling myself that since most of the flight is over the water, that if we start to go down, at least the plane can land on the water. That's how I'm making myself feel better. So for the seaplane, there's a 45 pound limit for your bags. We know we're well under it, but let's see how much it is anyways. 38.6. Oh, that's actually more than I thought. All right, here's Catherine's. Oh, 28.95. I actually thought it was going to be 30. So that weight includes all of our food and all of our gear, but it does not include our cameras, which are about three pounds each, or the water, which on our heaviest water carry days will probably be about eight pounds. I think this is my heaviest backpack I've ever backpacked with. We're gonna have muscles by the end of this, or a really sore back and feet and shoulders and shoulders and everything. At least our bags are not as heavy as Elliot's. Oh, I got room. They got tons of room. 43.99. They're letting me fly the plane. Just kidding. They're letting me sit in the front. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm so nervous. Lake Superior is one of the five great lakes that span the border of the U.S. and Canada, which were formed during the last ice age. And at 31,700 square miles, it is not only the largest of the five, but is also the largest freshwater lake in the entire world by surface area, and the third largest lake in the world by volume, holding 10% of all of the earth's surface freshwater. We have spent quite a bit of time along the shores of Lake Superior, and we have always been blown away by its size. But seeing it from this perspective really helps you grasp what a massive lake it is. That was one of the coolest experiences of my entire life. 10 out of 10. I've been sold on seaplanes for a while. That was dope. It was so, so, so smooth. That was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. I'm so excited we get to do that again. I know. We have made it to Windigo, which is on the west side of the park, and where our backpacking adventure will begin. And for our first tasks, we had to get our backpacking permit, which is free, but they do have an entrance fee for the park, so we made sure to pack our America the Beautiful pass. And we had to go to the park store to get propane, since we weren't allowed to bring it on the plane. But since we got here late in the afternoon, we're just going to camp at the Washington Creek Campground tonight, which is really close to where the plane dropped us off. So we're off to go find our first campsite at Isle Royale. Nice! There are 36 campgrounds on the island, with some only accessible by foot and others only accessible by water. And while the backcountry campgrounds we'll be staying at for most of this trip are pretty simple, this one and Rock Harbor are a bit fancier. They have water spigots, flushing toilets, coin showers, and even laundry a short walk away. This campground has tent sites and these wooden shelters, and we lucked out and we got one. And check it out, we fit in here perfectly, snug as a bug. Not all of the campgrounds have these wooden shelters, but we hope to stay in as many as we can. So there are no bears on Isle Royale, but there are moose and wolves, which may be even more terrifying. And because of the wolves, you are required to store your food properly, either in a bear canister or one of these food storage lockers, which most campgrounds on the island have. And since we're staying at campgrounds that do have them, and to save a little bit of weight, we decided to just put all of our food, because it's six days worth of food, it's a lot of food, in these dry bags, and store them in these lockers, so our food doesn't get eaten, and we don't get eaten. Speaking of getting eaten, the wildlife I am most worried about on this island are the mosquitoes. I can see like seven of them on Adam right now. We are getting eaten alive, they are fierce. All right, let's go back to the safe shelter. This is fun. It's like we're at summer camp. That's what Katie's been saying all week. Good night, everyone. Cheers. For our breakfast on this trip, we are having some shin ramen and some mashed potatoes, and since they don't come with a bag to cook it in, we bought some of these generic backpacking bags. I'm not sure that this is gonna fit, so I'm gonna have to do some Hulk smashing to make it fit in here. Are the noodles cooked? Yeah, I think so. They're pretty soft. Smells good. Oh yeah. Yeah, it worked. It's good. So good. Breakfast of champions. My only concern is that it's a tad spicy, so I hope that does not backfire on us later. Our packs are light. This is nothing. If your pack's light, do you want some of my weight? We are strong, our packs are light, and we're with friends. There are no roads on Isle Royale. The only way to explore is by foot or watercraft, and with 165 miles of trails, there are lots of backpacking route options you could do. But for our trip, we're going to be hiking the Greenstone Ridge Trail, plus a couple other trails from Wendigo on the west side of the island, all the way to Rock Harbor on the east side of the island. We have gone on about 20 backpacking trips in our lifetime, but this is going to be our longest one yet. Not only in days, but also in miles, and today we have about an 11 and a half mile hike to the South Lake Dezor Campground. There is a campground that is closer that we could go to, but it's more inland and it doesn't have a lake, and we hear that the water source is not super reliable, so we've decided to push it a bit further. While today, Isle Royale is enjoyed by hikers and boaters, the island has hosted many different groups of people and activities over the years. The Ojibwe hunted, fished, and mined copper on this island for thousands of years. They call the island Manong, which means the good place in the Ojibwe language, with the name Isle Royale coming from French explorers who named it in honor of their king. Throughout the 1800s, multiple larger mining operations boomed and busted before the island shifted to focusing on commercial fishing and tourism, with many small resorts opening across the island. By 1940, mining operations had long ended, only one resort remained, and Isle Royale became the 26th U.S. National Park in order to conserve a prime example of Northwood's wilderness. After hiking in the trees all day, the view has opened up and we can see Lake Superior off in the distance, and that lake down there is where we're camping tonight, so we are almost there. I'm so proud of you! Crushed it! Crushed it! I'm so sore, but I also feel very accomplished. Yes, crushed it! I'm so proud of you. Very sweaty. Yeah, dripping. Some of the inland lakes here have leeches, but we have heard from campers that they have swam in this lake and not gotten a leech, and it is a very warm, sunny day. We are all sticky and sweaty, so we're going for a dip. Hopefully we don't become the leech's dinner in the process. We have to carry six days worth of food, which is a lot of food to carry, and it's very, very bulky, so to save on some space, I read a hack on the internet that you take the food out of these backpacking meals and put it in a Ziploc bag, because these bags are just kind of oddly shaped, and they're kind of stiff, and just kind of hard to all work together, and I really do think it saved us some space. So now I have to re-pour the contents back in, and just in case I didn't have the bag, something happened to the bag, I put all the instructions on there so we know how to cook it still. This is my favorite backpacking meal of all time. I am so excited. Long day of hiking. I get to end with tikka masala. Way to go guys! We did it! We crushed the day! Cheers! Today we are hiking 8 miles or 15 miles, to be determined, and since this is the longest backpacking trip that any of us have been on, staying hydrated is a big goal for all of us, so we made sure to bring lots of Element for the entire crew. Ho ho ho! Salty Santa is here! Wow! Thank you! If you're not familiar with Element, it is our favorite electrolyte drink mix, and a must-have item for us on all backpacking adventures. Each one of these packets has a mix of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, without any sugar, which helps us replenish the electrolytes that we lose while sweating, and since we are hiking hours and hours every day while carrying a lot of extra weight, we are definitely working our bodies pretty hard and sweating a lot more than normal. They have a bunch of different flavors to choose from, but this morning we're drinking their Lemonade Iced Tea flavor, which includes the same mix of electrolytes as their other flavors, plus has 50 milligrams of caffeine from full spectrum black tea extract, which is enough caffeine to give us a little boost in focus without having a big crash later on. A big thank you to Element for sponsoring this video and supporting our adventures. If you want to try Element, head to drinklmnt.com to place your order, or scan the QR code on the screen, and you will automatically get a free sample pack included with your order, which now includes Lemonade Salt, one of our personal favorites. Let's do it! My body's sore. I'm tired. I don't feel that great, but we're gonna crush it! We have just about made it to the turnoff to Hatchet Lake, and we have a big decision to make. We can either stop here, and that'll put us at eight miles today, or we can keep going to West Chicken Bone Lake for a total of 15 miles today, but we're gonna poll the group and see how everyone's feeling. Should we stay or should we go? I'll defer to Kay and Jay. This is your first backpack? Yeah, I think that you guys decide. I'm calling SOS. I'm getting a helicopter right out. Fair. I don't want to hike a long distance in the rain, and the forecast has it sounding like that's what tomorrow would be if we didn't forge on ahead, so I'm down to go. I will probably need at least two more stops with my pack on. So we have seven more miles to go today, and I wouldn't necessarily say this trail is hard from an elevation perspective, but it does have a handful of challenges, and the first one is that it's pretty overgrown and brushy, so we're constantly walking through all these areas with super tall plants that kind of cover the trail, and you can't really see where you're going, and they're brushing up against you. It's not necessarily bushwhacking. You can easily get through it, but it's definitely made the trail a bit tricky at times. There also aren't that many reliable water sources along this stretch of the trail. We've had an 8 or 11 mile gap between water sources these first two days, which means we have to carry a lot of water, which makes our packs heavier, which makes the hike harder, and lastly the mosquitoes. Right now, they're not too bad, but earlier today and at last night's campsite, they were atrocious. Oh, they're terrible. They're absolutely terrible. It's raining mosquitoes. Yeah, they're 11 out of 10 terrible. While the hike hasn't been overly scenic so far, things started to turn around the second half of the day when we finally made it to the Greenstone Ridge Trail's ridgeline terrain. Isle Royale consists of a stack of over a hundred individual ancient lava flows which date back 1.2 billion years, and the Greenstone Ridge lava flow is the thickest of them all with a depth of up to 800 feet. From up here, we were finally rewarded with more sweeping views of the area, which boosted morale a little bit as we struggled the rest of the day. We made it! Oh, oh my gosh. What a day. We've been going. It's 7 0 8 p.m. Oh gosh. Almost 12 hours. I think we've been going almost 12 hours. The hardest backpacking day of my life. Completely covered in sweat, bug spray, mosquito bites, another layer of sweat and bug spray, even more bites. Completely exhausted. Back is shot. The water looks so enticing. Oh, I want to get in the water. Yeah, we got a lakefront campground. We got here really late. This is a really nice available. Yeah. So, and we got one on the water. Just pretty amazing. Makes it easy to fill up, and the bear locker isn't very far. Not very far. Toilet's a little far, but there's plenty of spots to do a secluded pee here. So, a little bit too many mosquitoes, but that's just how it goes here. I'm proud of you. Way to go. Oh my gosh. Way to go. Oh my gosh. Not very long. 20 minutes. Oh, it's cold. I don't want leeches. How's everyone doing this morning? I'm doing well. I'm sore in a lot of places that I didn't know could be sore. My hand is currently swollen, but I'm very excited for the hike today. I'm excited to get to the shelter and relax for a few hours, maybe six or seven or eight, and maybe pop a Benadryl. See what I can do with these bug bites. Well, right now I am bandaging one of my seven feet blisters. This one is the smaller one. I have a similar one on the exact same spot on my other foot that's about this big. My calves are bruised and sore. I'm covered in bug bites. Everything hurts. And you know what? We still have to walk today. I'm excited to get to the more popular area of the island, the more rocky. We've seen a lot of vegetation, which has been cool, and you just feel like you're in this massive island of life, and I'm excited to see other areas for the next couple days. Yeah, I'm feeling fine. I took a blue pill last night, which is a nighttime pain reliever, so that helped. And yeah, I never want to do yesterday again because it was up there with our longest day hike ever, but carrying like 45 pounds of weight. So I would say yesterday was not fun, but today I hope it's going to be fun. I just hope that my body doesn't like carry over from yesterday. Yeah, cute look. Look like a Star Wars character. These are not the droids you're looking for. I'm feeling really good this morning especially now that I've got the coffee ready. We've got an easier day upcoming. It's gonna be a good day. We got this! Today we have a short day, just a little under six miles, and we're actually going to be detouring off of the Greenstone Ridge Trail and heading down to Mosquee Basin, which I hear is one of the best campsites on the island. I've been very excited to go here and our goal is to get a shelter, but not just any shelter, a shelter on the lake. So Adam and I split off from the rest of the group so we can go ahead and get us a shelter, and we just passed a large group that told us that just up ahead at this lake that we're about to walk up to, they saw a wolf and the wolf did not really want to turn away. There were 10 of them clapping and making noise and it wasn't really moving, so they said we should make a lot of noise. We are not your food. I've been wanting to see a wolf but maybe not in a situation like that. Yesterday we met a girl who had a wolf come up to her tent at Daisy Farm. She said it was really skittish, so kind of opposite of this experience. We did see a fox last night. It came into our camp and Katie was protecting our stuff and scared it off because the foxes here will steal your shoes, they'll steal anything. They stole some girls down the way their knife last night, which is kind of wild. Oh, oh, this makes me nervous. Hey, hey. Hey, hey. Go, go, go, go, go. We were standing here taking in the view and I could hear just something going on over there and I looked and he was walking right down these boardwalks towards us. I did not think we would actually see a wolf. Wow, he looked just like a coyote, like a big dog. Oh, oh, scary. I feel like I can still hear him walking, so let's go. Let's go. I'm pretty sure that's our friend screaming absolute bloody murder at that wolf. My heart is beating so fast. Are you guys okay? Y'all were like, y'all were screaming like it was attacking you. That scared the s*** out of us. It didn't care about us, like it was coming. Yeah. Like not in a threatening way, but it was right at you. It was a giant. Adam thought maybe it was like deaf because it just didn't seem bothered by us at all. We decided after that wolf encounter to stay together as a group the rest of the day. Oh, cool. Yay! Wow. This is incredible. Yeah, it's worth hiking long, long ways the last two days. Like what? Yeah, this is our backyard slash front yard. Just look at that. Oh my gosh. This is definitely living up to the best campground on the island. We've only been to a few, but I don't know how you beat this. This is incredible, and since there's not that much vegetation right around us, it's super open. So far, the mosquitoes do not seem too bad. I had very high expectations for this campground, and I was a little scared that it wouldn't meet them, but I think it actually exceeded them. The gloomy weather turned into hours of rain, which made us very grateful to have a cozy shelter to hang out in. So the afternoon was spent relaxing, reading, playing games, and enjoying the views. It was the perfect way to recover and unwind after a very long first two days on the trail. We decided to get up early for sunrise coffee by the lake, because how can you not when we have this right outside of our door? And Elliot taught us how to do the gourmet version of the AeroPress, which basically just means you do it upside down. I don't know. He's talking big game about how much better it is. We'll see. I think it tastes even better. No, it's really good. It's a little stronger. Yeah, it's really good. Cheers, guys. Today is another one of those days where we're not quite sure how far we're gonna hike, but we do have a couple options, and our first leg is four miles to Daisy Farm. For the next leg of today's adventure, we are hiking up to the Mount Ojibwe Tower, and instead of carrying all of our gear up to the top, Katie has offered to stay back at a shelter at Daisy Farm and watch our stuff, and we're going to take much lighter packs, because I think it's a pretty decent climb to get up there. So we're emptying this out to make it as light as possible, and then we'll come back here afterwards, pick up Katie, and just kind of reassess what to do for the rest of the day. Have fun. Enjoy your rest. We're all done. This pack is so light. It feels like I don't even have anything on. It's incredible. And I have absolutely nothing on. I am a hiking princess for the next couple hours, and man, it feels good not to have the pack. So you can't go all the way to the top of the lookout, but you can go about two-thirds of the way up, and from up here, you just have 360 degree views of the island. When we first got here, it was pretty socked in with fog, but as we've been sitting here, it's really windy, and it's just pushing the fog away, and we can now see Lake Superior. We can see islands off in the distance. We can see lakes, and just a sea of trees. And after hiking this island for, I guess, five days now, it's really cool to get to see it from this high up, and just kind of see what we've been going through. We've been going through a lot. Going through the toilet paper, going through our snacks, our water, our patience. I fell asleep until about 25 minutes ago. I'm having a great time. I'm feeling great. Nice! The Daisy Farm area was super beautiful. There's a really cool pier and a beach you can hang out on, and the best word I can use to describe it is idyllic. But we decided not to stay there, and we're going to keep marching on down the trail a little over four miles to the three-mile campground. So as we mentioned, Isle Royale is the least visited national park in the lower 48, and going into this trip, we were so curious if we would feel solitude, or if there'd be more people than we expected, and it really has not been busy at all. We are here at the end of June, and I will say the west side of the island was very, very quiet. Some days we'd only see one or two groups of people. Most of the time they were these summer camps with at least 10 teenagers out here for 10 to 14 days, which is so impressive. But as we've moved more to the eastern side of the park, which is definitely more popular, we have seen more people, but it's still only a handful of people per day. And we've had zero issues getting a campsite, getting a shelter if we wanted one, and I'm very curious because this is one of the easiest to access campgrounds that we're going to tonight, if we'll actually find a spot. So we got here about six o'clock, and note to future visitors of Isle Royale, get here earlier because all the shelters and all the tent sites, they are completely full. So the protocol is if all of the sites are taken, you can then find the overflow group site to go camp at, which I'm not sure if there's an overflow one here, but we're gonna check the group sites. And if that's not an option, then you have to start asking people if you can share a tent site with them, and then if that's not an option, you have to ask people if you can camp outside of their shelter. So we're really hoping we get a group site because I don't want us to have to split up for the night. We don't have to go sleep with strangers. Yes. Unless we want to. That stretch from Daisy Farm to Three Mile was one of the most scenic stretches that we've hiked so far, but it was so rocky and rugged, and my feet are just in so much pain from the heavy pack and all the hiking, that the terrain made it a lot harder. So I'm very, very happy to be here. Oh good grief. Oh good lord. Oh my gosh. I can't feel my toes, it's only been five seconds. Oh gosh, this sucks. Are we doing it? Yeah, we're here. I didn't come all the way out here to Isle Royale not to do it. Three, two, one, go. As brutal as it was, after 12 miles of sweaty hiking today, that is the perfect way to end it. Oh gosh. Today is our final hiking day of this trip. We only have three miles to go until we get to Rock Harbor and we have officially crossed Isle Royale. I can't believe it. We are strong. Our packs are the lightest they've ever been. The bugs don't bother us. We're here with our friends, sharing hope. Oh, there's a cave. My name is Cave Suzanne's Cave. We'll call it Suzie's for short. You can crawl out the other end. I'm gonna try it. Oh, let's see if I can do this with this pack on. Oh gee, all the muscles. My back is stuck. Way to go, Catherine. Yeah, I'm going sideways because you know I haven't done enough walking and moving and hurting myself. We almost got this. All right, I made it to the other side. I switched to my clean pants this morning and they're already filthy again. It was worth it. That was fun. Even though the backpacking portion of our trip may be over, we decided to go for a day hike in this area to Scoville Point, which will take us onto a peninsula that should have some beautiful views of Lake Superior. That was a fantastic hike and totally worth putting in some extra miles after six long days on the trail, but now it is time to feast. Rock Harbor not only has a lodge and cabins but it also has two restaurants and tonight for dinner we are going to the Greenstone Grill and I've been looking forward to this for days and days. In fact, a big reason why we chose to hike the island from west to east is so that we could end the trip with a hot meal at the grill. I want to thank us all for coming out here on some of our first trips on all of our longest trips. I want to thank everybody who helped plan this trip and that we all accomplished it together. Let's go! Cherry Coke! Good job! Joey has been talking about wanting to get a cherry coke for days. Miles and miles. Cherry Coke! The few drinks they have here, they happen to have cherry coke. Joey, that's pretty good. That slaps right here. Oh, that sugar once it hits the lips. Oh, wow. I got the local white fish sandwich and yes, we've hiked tons of miles, but it is legit good. Very good. Nice crispy batter on there. Coleslaw is awesome. The bun, super pillowy and super good. I had very mid expectations for this burger, but it is hitting the spot and they have delicious looking desserts. So happy! As if this trip could not end any better, some people told us they saw a moose, which is the final animal that we need to see you all here. We were losing hope, so it'd be so cool if we got to see one. It has something in its mouth. How cute! I'm so happy. What a great end. I am so glad we got to complete the Isle Royale trifecta. I don't know if it's really a thing, but the fox, the wolf, and the moose. After seven days of backpacking on Isle Royale, it's time to head back to the mainland. We came to Isle Royale for a challenge and it delivered. Crossing the island definitely pushed us physically and mentally at times, but our efforts paid off with solitude, peaceful lakes, and stunning rugged shoreline views. Combine that with the remoteness of the park, the fun transportation to get to and from the island, and the fact that you have to hike to truly experience it, and it's unlike any national park that we have visited so far. But hands down, the best part was experiencing it with our friends. We are so grateful to have friends that are eager to take on a challenge. This was all of our longest backpacking trips and the first ever trip for Katie, and we are so proud of everyone for tackling this adventure. If you want to experience camping and backpacking on Isle Royale, make sure to head on over to our camping website, Stoked2Camp, to learn more about camping and backpacking here, plus what we would do differently. And now we are off to Minnesota to visit Voyagers National Park, and we are going to be exploring the park in a very unique way.