snug harbor's exploding with...fungal growths!

Mushrooms are everywhere, churning the soil
We'd all be buried in dead stuff if not for their toil
Some are bright purple and some look like coral -
Let's cook them in garlic and spices and oil!

Okay, maybe not that last bit - too many can kill you and anyway, as we all know, they should be left to do their mushroomy thing right where we spotted them. (LNT Principle #4: Leave what you find!)

There are an awful lot of incredibly cool mushrooms out there right now - a mushroom being, "an enlarged complex aboveground fleshy fruiting body of a fungus." Psssh, of course. One of my favorites is the weirdly purple Cortinarius violaceus, whose scientific name hints at its distinctive color. Alina, Erin, and I spotted a few of these on the horrendous portage between Duncan and Tobin; I've also seen them near Moskey Basin. This plump mushroom has a few honors under its belt: it was one of just a few fungal species that were personally named by Carl Linnaeus (father of taxonomy) himself, and it's also the darkest member of its genus. They are apparently edible, but as we said earlier - stop that! I'm swatting your hand away. Let it do its thing.

The coral fungi is another interesting group. For those of you interested in things like scientific taxonomy (hello, fellow nerds), the group that we commonly lump together with the term "coral fungus" actually spans several families and three different orders, so even though they all look similar they are NOT all very closely related. (Remember: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species; humans are in the order of Primates, along with things like gorillas and orangutans and lemurs.) We refer to things as a coral fungus when they have many closely clustered vertical branches, often found on decaying wood (which, to be honest, describes a great deal of other fungi as well.) Some of them are very brightly colored. Many of them are fleshy and edible (but not ours! hands off.) Most of ours here are white, tan, or pinkish.

Those of you out here, let me know what crazy fungi you've seen! Email photos to snugharborreporter@gmail.com.

So it's not only berries this time of year; in a different way, fungus is another fruit we have in August, part of the same 'burgeoning cornucopia" I mentioned last time.

how to tell it's August

The Top Ways to Tell it's August in Snug Harbor:


Yes, they're the same color as bluberries;
but these are the fruits of the bluebead lily,
and please, please don't eat them.



1. The thimbleberries (finally, finally, oh hooray!) are ripe. August is that blissful month when every single day you can wander around Snug Harbor and it seems like, even though you SWEAR you picked every single ripe one the day before, the bushes are suddenly loaded with super red, luscious, juicy berries once again. They keep on coming. If you get sick of thimbleberries, well, the raspberries are ripe too. In fact, this whole island is a burgeoning cornucopia of ripening fruits, in all colors and ranges of delicious-ness. Instead of questions about flowers, we get questions about berries. ("What are the nice big shiny ones? Are they poisonous? I just ate a bunch.")

2. On a related note: you spot Captain Don wandering the back woods of Snug Harbor with a plastic Folgers container and an old shirt so stained with thimbleberry juice it looks like he killed three men. He's got a slew of secret spots and comes back with literally pounds of berries. Pounds. He's basically a professional.

The First Episode in Don's Famous 'Berry Man' Series

3. Visitors stop complaining about how cold the water is, and instead Tobin is always overrun with happy swimmers, laid out on the docks like the sunning turtles.

 4. It's getting awfully crowded. The Ranger III, the Queen IV, the Voyageur II, and the seaplane (it needs a catchy name - does it have one and I'm just unaware?) have all been working ceaselessly, bringing full loads out and back. The campgrounds, including the group sites, are beginning to bulge somewhat at the seams. Our permit program, "Trakker", has this very angry, bright red face icon pop up (very official) whenever a campground is full, and I don't believe I've completed a permit without at least one angry red face in quite awhile now. (If you're ever in the VC and hear us talking about 'frowny faces' or 'the scary angry face,' well, now you know. This is how our computer communicates with us.)


A dramatic photo of the Queen IV,
thanks to endlessloopphotography.com

 

5. The waves are picking up - and by that I mean the Queen IV was quite liberally splattered with vomit when it bounced and rolled into the harbor this morning. Yep. Gross. Sorry to throw it at you so bluntly there. And today was the better day; yesterday, 13-footers and big storms in Copper Harbor made its trip impossible, stranding a few dozen passengers here for an unintended extra night (who can complain, really?) Today, the Queen will make two trips with quick turnarounds. They arrived at noon and started back at one pm; they'll return to Rock Harbor with about eighty more people at 8:30 pm (or thereabouts), do as quick of a turnaround as humanly possible, and hopefully make it back to Copper Harbor by one am. Woohoo - night ride on the Queen!

Besides the occasional nauseating boat rides, visitors are having a great time here in Snug Harbor, and our staff is as well - with canoeing trips to Duncan Bay (holy portage - my neck is still angry at me), 'Cinco de Augusto' celebrations, and lots of our own swimming and sunbathing. This Snug Harbor Reporter hopes YOU'RE enjoying your August as well.

midsummer photos

Paddling near Blake Point on an exceptionally calm evening; if only that area always looked like this!

A sunset over the trees, looking back from the Snug Harbor marina.

Another quiet evening; a beautiful sailboat in Snug Harbor.

Another view out towards Blake Point.



It's not always this calm and peaceful in these parts, but it's always this gorgeous.

Merry Chrismoose!

At the end of every July, across America - well, you know, at least in a few places - we gather together and celebrate the ultimate holiday:

In fact, us Snug Harborites usually celebrate Chrismoose twice: once right here, with the friendly folk at Rock Harbor Lodge, and once down at Mott Island with the rest of our Park Service pals. This moose probably better represents a Mott Chrismoose:

As usual, both events were a smashing success, and both involved copious amounts of delicious food. Some highlights:

1. The Lodge Chrismoose featured foot-long hotdogs, homemade veggie burgers, candy-cane cookies, and those awesome frozen strawberry lemonade things, along with many other delicious treats. Not to be beaten,

2. The Mott Chrismoose featured a 138.5 lb pig, thanks to many hours of Levi and Jared watching it - all throughout the night, mind you. This was a giant pig. I do not know that I have ever seen a larger roasted pig. There was also corn, and - just to make my day - deviled eggs. YES.

3. The Lodge Chrismoose Canoe Race was won by Forrest and Col, representing for the Park Service as our District Ranger's sons. I don't want to rub this in anyone's FACE, or anything, but I think the Park Service has won for a few years in a row now...

4. Both events involved some jumping-off-docks activity. I mean, how else do you commemorate occasions when you live on an island?

5. Oh, and the weather did its thing - by that I mean, Lodge Chrismoose had to be rescheduled, and still occurred on a chilly, gray day, but Mott Chrismoose was on one of our hottest days yet. And they were on two consecutive days. I do not know how anyone thinks they can predict this stuff.

So Chrismoose is done, for another year, leaving Isle Royale best represented by THIS moose:

What's the spirit of Chrismoose? It's definitely about joy, I think - and new and old friendships, and eating well under a big sky, and enjoying the cold water of the lake. It's about celebrating how lucky we all are to live here on this crazy island, together. It's about how fricking goofy moose look, and how cool the loons sound at night. And, of course, it's about stuffing your face with roasted pig.



sunning ourselves

Erin Lehnert picked up our turtle sheets just now (we've been taking turtle accounts from visitors since early June; visitors just love reporting things) and we all remarked on the fact that turtle sightings have dropped off dramatically in the past couple of weeks. Erin, as she is wont to do, had a satisfying explanation: with the warm temperatures in the inland lakes, the painted turtles have less need or desire to head out into view and sun themselves.

This is NOT true of human residents on the island, painted or otherwise. These warm days are full of people sunning themselves across Snug Harbor, sprawled on docks and rocks and boats. I am sure we could get visitors to dutifully come in and report numbers and behavior of sunning backpackers as well, but so far I am not able to report exact data. It's roughly in the vicinity of "a lot." The lake is always there for a cool-down (much more reasonable now than it was a few weeks ago.)

When backpackers and NPS residents are not out enjoying this blissful weather, they might be seen lurking around the scads of thimbleberry bushes, poking at the berries hopefully, waiting for them to ripen. They're so close. It might happen any minute now.

There is, of course, more to life than sunshine and berries. The IR Boaters Association has moved out (after feeding us a remarkable feast of fried trout, coleslaw, homemade tartar sauce, and cake), but Snug Harbor is no less busy. The ferries are full; trails have been wreaking havoc on people's feet left and right; and random events, like the surprise arrival of the USGS research vessel the KiYi, keep us all on our toes.

Now get out there and sun yourself. I'll send a visitor to come tally you.

boaters' weekend in the snug

Today would be a typical day in Snug Harbor.

The Queen IV came in at 11:30 with 91 passengers and left again at 2:45 with slightly fewer.

The Voyageur left in the morning and the seaplane made its rounds.

The interp rangers - answering questions, telling stories, explaining leave-no-trace ethics, and generally helping things run smoothly - were awesome.

Visitors enjoyed the heck out of our interactive mammals table.

Visitors also enjoyed the heck out of the balmy sunshine.

The major difference between today and an actual typical day in the Snug is that this weekend is the Isle Royale Boaters' Association weekend, with their annual (get excited) massive fish fry on Saturday evening. So this means that instead of seeing mainly THESE in the marina:

Instead we're seeing a lot of THESE:

It always gets a little more exciting when the boaters pile in, and we love to have them here. Bring on the boater orientations! Bring on the season passes! And definitely, DEFINITELY, bring on that fish fry.

Every Day is Lake Superior Day

Firstly, I apologize for the long wait between posts; I was off-island for a few days (back in the sweltering heat of the mainland; I'd had no idea how good we have it out here) and Snug Harbor is picking up in busy-ness besides, as it always does after the fourth.


Melissa discusses the America in the shadow of one of its old lifeboats.



I returned on Lake Superior Day, when we celebrate this massive THING that's always around us, sparkling, making the weather crazy, keeping us cooler than our poor neighbors down south, inviting our jumps off the dock, generously providing a home for delicious fish, etc. We are defined and controlled by Lake Superior here on Isle Royale, and really every day could aptly be called "Lake Superior Day", but we choose to wrap up all of the celebration handily on the fifteenth. 



Valerie and her roving ROV were a big hit with the kids in town.



The past couple years we've seen a rather subdued celebration, but we went all out this year, with a sort of Lake Superior "festival" in the harbor. Valerie helped visitors explore the underwater world of the marina with 'Torch,' our friendly ROV. Robert explained how we turn Lake Superior water into safe and delicious drinking water to intrigued crowds, and Paul talked about scuba diving and zebra mussels with a slew of diving equipment props. The Buckleys told commercial fishing stories while Carl covered the sport fishing angle, and Melissa took visitors into the past with a giant map of the America shipwreck. Alina and Erin ran a popular 'Lake Superior dunk tank' trivia game on the dock, in which lucky winners got to push a wet-suited Erin into the harbor.



Erin frolicks into the lake after another successful round of trivia.



Dozens of visitors roamed the stations, and Lake Superior Day 2012 was pronounced a rousing success: especially after several of us leaped off the Ranger III dock as the Queen rolled out. I ended the day with a Lake Superior themed evening program in the auditorium. Fun was had by all, lemme tell you, even if it was about 4,000 degrees and remarkably muggy outside.

We're on the second half of summer now. The fireweed is blooming and the thimbleberries are green on the bush. Stay tuned for more stories and fun; Snug Harbor just gets more exciting from here on out.

Donna talks fishing with a crowd.

Paul shows off some scuba equipment to interested visitors.