Porcupine Mountains -- Post 2

This posting includes more photos from the trip to the Porcupines I took a couple of weekends ago with my sister, Diana. We had a glorious day for hiking and having lunch in the woods.



I didn't know until we arrived in the area that it has one of the biggest tracks of virgin timber in the Midwest. Some of the trees were just huge!




Lake of the Clouds is around a mile long, but only 15 feet deep. It is fed by the Big Carp River which enters at the end of the lake. The cliffs of the escarpment support an ecosystem whose structure has probably changed little since glaciers melted from the area 9,900 years ago. The combination of shallow soils, slow growing vegetation, and harsh conditions make this ancient ecosystem very sensitive to disturbance.








We drove the South Boundary Road from the Visitors Center 25 miles to the Presque Island River. Due to all the rain the previous week, even the locals said they have never seen so much white water in the river.