Vacationing in Apostle Islands increasingly popular

Despite stormy weather and some flood damage, more people are choosing to spend time in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin than in the same period last summer.

Last year, more than 173,000 people made the trek to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. And that was up 13% from the year before. This year, park superintendent Bob Krumanaker says they’re up another 5%: “I’m seeing more people in the park and certainly more people that I do in Bayfield then I normally do in the first part of summer, so I’m feeling pretty good about that. I think it’s the hot weather personally.”

It’s been a rocky year for the 21-island group with two saturating rain events, including the June 20th storm that flooded much of the northern region. Krumanaker says they did have damage but absorbed it. “What we saw were a number of trees down in the visible places. I’m sure that there was a lot of erosion and trees down in the back country that we’ll discover years later and not remember the storm. But yeah, really the islands came through just fine.”

The Apostle Islands is mostly a wilderness area allowing for motorboats, but no motorized vehicles on the islands.