Moskey Basin to Daisy Farm
After taking the Voyageur II to Chippewa Harbor, you explored the area around the harbor and then hiked over to Lake Richie to take in its beauty. On the way you crossed over a long boardwalk and passed on the pathway with the wolf prints to get the the Lake Richie Trail, and then you went left to the lakeside campground. Filled with the placid beauty absorbed from along the Lake Richie shore, you head in an easterly direction toward Moskey Basin, which is beautiful. You will approach it via the Lake Richie Trail and take the path rightward at the junction where it meets the Rock Harbor Trail. Tomorrow, you will choose the left fork to continue your hike to Daisy Farm, but today you will cross over the swampy river into the campground at Moskey Basin to spend the night.
A Simple Single-Plank Structure
(Looking toward the Lake Richie Trail Junction)
The bridge over the creek is wide, a double-plank boarded walkway with a rail, an unusual feature for the island. Most are single plank wide, no rail. Stop in the middle and look to the right and inland for moose grazing along the banks and marshy shore. See the water birds, mergansers or mallard ducks paddling about. Look left, out into Lake Superior and the herring gulls overhead. If it’s early or mid-summer or into the early fall, you will hear the faint whisper and feel the soft brush of mosquitoes on your skin. They don’t land, of course, because you have used repellent and are saved from the bite of being the host. The moment is perfect, bright sun overhead in the break from the tree cover that the bridge provides.
Only a little past the bridge is the campground. As the trail meanders through the forest, the canopy covers overhead again, obscuring the sky, yet you peek at blue sky and white, puffy clouds from the gaps between the branches. Reaching the campground, three options appear in the path ahead. The first route goes leftward to the dock, the second goes leftward and up onto the point that blocks the view of the dock from the campground. The right path goes to the campground. Immediately after as you head toward the campground, you’ll note another fork, the left branch, which is more heavily traveled, goes directly to the campsites, and the right one goes directly to the privies and then hooks back into the middle of the campsites. Sometimes this is good information to have.
Shelters at Moskey Basin are perched on rocks along the shore, some the first shelter looking down from above and the others arranged level with and next to the water. The basin extends in front of the shelters offering exquisite views and subtle invitations for visitors to swim in Lake Superior. Be mindful, prior to jumping in, to have a dry change of clothes to change into, for this lake is never warm. Still, Moskey Basin might provide the warmest of the waters on the Lake Superior shore at Isle Royale, but remember that “warm” is a relative term. The water will be cold and refreshing; it is somewhat warmer than it will be outside the basin at Daisy Farm and Three Mile campgrounds because of the relative shelter of the basin.
You can swim in front of your shelter or tent site, or you can take a dip near the dock. If you choose to swim, realize that the rocks are extremely slippery, and you might not be able to get back out safely or easily without water shoes that grip on the slippery rocks. Still, it feels so good to wash off the trail grime and sweat after hiking in from Chippewa Harbor that getting into the water is worth the effort. Immersed in the water to your chin, swim a little outward from your campsite and then look back at and along the shoreline, yet another perspective on the beauty which you came to the island to experience. Come out of the water slowly, and take care not to slip on the slick rocks.
In the mouth of a second stream, a beaver lodge is perched at the head of the basin; it sits inaccessible at the juncture of the lake and the creek, beyond the end of the campground where the trail dead ends. It appears that you could find a way across the creek near the beaver lodge, but that is not the case. Large gaps of deep water between the tufts of swamp grass protruding from the soggy ground on small islets in the stream prevent crossing on foot. The meadow visible beyond the stream is unattainable, a mysterious and untrodden pristine lea. I have tried several times but have never been able to find a way across. Yet I see the meadow and think about whose feet might have stepped there over the millennium, softly clad soles that made nary a mark. Of course, you might rent a dingy or paddle by in your own kayak or canoe, which will significantly reduce the mystique.
All afternoon when I was last there, a beaver swam from its lodge to various points along the shore to nibble shoots and gather twigs to take back to its snug home. Perhaps it had young hidden in the safety of the mound house that looked onto the basin, too, one critter home marking the end of the row of the several shelters in an arc along the shore. Once, it waddled within three feet of my group as we all sat perfectly still, filming it with our phones. It ate short deciduous bushes thoughtfully, as though contemplating the flavor, and then collected a bunch of thimbleberry bushes to carry off. It swam away, bushes in tow, tail out behind.
A fox visited also, climbing picnic table after picnic table at the successive campsites, scouting crumbs or full meals from unsuspecting backpackers. If it were a full meal, some hikers might end their trek a little hungry and a little smarter about the pesky and precocious thieves who lay in wait for opportunity. Wolves, too, visit Moskey Basin, pacing along the shore, not so much for the potential of free human food, but for the possibility of making a meal of the fat beaver whose abode is perched nearby and who forages all along the shore. The beavers, oblivious to potential dangers, perhaps trust too much that abundant human presence will dissuade the island’s alpha predators from coming near.
In the evening, the sun sets behind you, but orange and pinks stream across the sky, stretching out before you. After dinner, take time to walk back to the dock for a wider view of the head of the basin, and climb the point in between for another perspective over and into the water. At night, stars fill the sky. Sometimes, the auroras or the Milky Way are visible. While the days are long in the northern summer, take a headlamp so that you can dally on the way and breathe deeply the scents of the night, the pungency of the organic swamp flora, the crisp night air, the unique scent of Lake Superior’s water.
Moskey Basin faces east, so the sunrises present themselves early. On your way out of the campground to head on toward Daisy Farm, choose to filter your water for the day at the dock where the basin extends unbounded before you, where at its end is Daisy Farm. The hike there is four miles along a minor ridge that emerges from time to time to look over the landscape below. The hike to Daisy Farm is not difficult. By now, the terrain is familiar, traversing rocks and roots, scaling small ridges and escarpments. You will be surprised how quickly you reach the junction at which you head right into Daisy Farm. You can join us on this itinerary this summer from June 14 to 20.