The highlight of our stay in Munising, MI, was a boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, the first of four national lakeshores. The Pictured Rocks are sandstone cliffs rising 50 to 200 feet directly up from Lake Superior. The cliffs begin just east of Sand Point and stretch for about 15 miles. Mineral seepage creates the colors. Red and orange are iron, green and blue are copper, black is manganese, and white is lime. There are also a number of waterfalls.
When we visited this area in 2009, it stormed and then continued to be very windy. The boat didn’t run until the last day we were there, and there were still whitecaps on the lake then, so we decided not to go. We were really pleased to have lovely weather with little wind for the boat trip, and we enjoyed it tremendously.
Soon after leaving the dock we passed caves formed when the softer rock near the lake eroded, followed by colorful striped cliffs.
There are three other national lakeshores in the US National Park System: Indian Dunes and Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan, and Apostle Islands on Lake Superior. We’ve been to all but Indian Dunes.
Miner’s Castle is one of the outstanding rock formations. It can be seen from the lake and visited by road. (Note observation deck on top left).
We passed many interesting rock formations and colorful rocks on the cruise.
The Flower Pot:
The boat entered a small circular area where we were quite close to the cliffs. At this point we headed back to Munising.
On the return we saw more colorful rocks – one area with the blue of copper.
Amazingly, this tree is growing on top of rock and is sustained by its roots going back to land on the left.
We enjoyed the boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, and so did the other Yankee RV Tours members.
Kayakers enjoyed exploring the lakeshore and cliffs as well.
As the boat returned to the dock, it detoured by the old light station, not in use now but still standing guard at the entrance to the harbor.
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