Pictured Rocks & Grand Island by Pontoon 🚤❤️ | Exploring Lake Superior Our Own Way

This was easily one of the days we were looking forward to most on our Upper Peninsula trip — spending an entire day out on Lake Superior exploring Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Grand Island from our own pontoon. Instead of taking one of the larger tour boats, we rented a pontoon for the full day from Seaberg Pontoon Rentals in Munising. That gave us from 10 in the morning until 8 at night to explore at our own pace, stop when something caught our attention, get closer to the shoreline where it was safe to do so, and just enjoy being out on Lake Superior. And there was A LOT to see. ❤️ Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore stretches for about 42 miles along Lake Superior, with roughly 15 miles of towering sandstone cliffs. In places those cliffs rise 50 to 200 feet straight above the lake. Seeing them from the water gives you a completely different perspective. We cruised past huge rock walls streaked with reds, oranges, greens, blues, browns and whites, along with arches, caves, ledges, waterfalls and formations that have been carved and changed by Lake Superior for generations. Those incredible colors come from minerals carried through the sandstone by groundwater. Pictures really do not prepare you for the size of some of these cliffs. We passed tour boats tucked beneath waterfalls, kayakers paddling below enormous rock overhangs, people swimming along the shoreline, little beaches hidden between the cliffs, and sections where the forest seemed to grow right to the edge of the rock. Then we headed around Grand Island. Grand Island sits just offshore from Munising and covers roughly 13,500 acres of forest, beaches, inland lakes and sandstone shoreline. Some of its cliffs reach around 300 feet above Lake Superior. We worked our way around the island, seeing everything from rocky, heavily wooded sections to sandy beaches and beautiful stretches of shoreline. We made our way into Trout Bay, explored around the island and simply enjoyed having the freedom to slow down whenever we wanted. That was probably our favorite part of renting the pontoon ourselves. There was no schedule telling us when we had to move on. If we wanted to sit somewhere for a few minutes, we could. If we saw something interesting along the cliffs, we could slow down and look. We could watch the tour boats, kayakers and other boats come and go while doing the entire day at our own pace. Lake Superior gave us a beautiful day for it too. Pictured Rocks was incredible, but getting to combine it with a trip all the way around Grand Island made this one of our favorite adventures of the entire trip. If you’re planning a trip to Munising and are comfortable operating a boat, this is definitely an experience worth looking into. Seeing this part of Michigan from Lake Superior is something completely different from seeing it from land. Come along with us as we spend the day exploring Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Grand Island from the water. 🚤❤️ 📍 Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore — Munising, Michigan 📍 Grand Island National Recreation Area 🚤 Pontoon rental — Seaberg Pontoon Rentals, Munising