Beaver Basin Overlook - Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Our visit to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore's Beaver Basin Overlook was one of my favorite activities on our recent vacation.  It's one of the less accessible areas of the park, found only after travelling several miles of a primitive truck trail, just getting there is a big part of the adventure.

Beaver Basin (from National Park Service park map)

Yours truly, Mr Crippled Coot at Beaver Basin Overlook

While the landforms of Beaver Basin Wilderness were shaped by the God, glaciers, and the ancestral predecessors of Lake Superior, the area's wilderness designation is a recent thing.  Created as a part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, Beaver Basin Wilderness totals 11,740 acres, including 13 miles of Lake Superior shoreline from Spray Falls on the west to Sevenmile Creek on the east.

Imagine the entire scene below, not as woods and trees, but instead as a large shallow bay.  As recently as 4500 years ago, Lake Nipissing (a predecessor of current Lake Superior) covered Beaver Basin in exactly that way.

Red line denotes the boundary of Beaver Basin Wilderness (designated in 2009) part of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  People with experience reading topo maps can easily picture the area as a large shallow bay.

Folks interested in visiting this overlook for themselves should note that warnings about the access road being primitive and rough are very much true.  There are only 2 kinds of vehicles that would get the "Crippled Coot Seal of Approval" for using this primitive trail, high clearance 4x4 vehicles and (of course) rental cars.  Mrs Coot has pointed out, for folks who don't have a rental car or 4x4 handy, that it's also possible to trek the rough 3 mile access road on foot.

Mrs Crippled Coot smiles -  trailhead at Beaver Basin Overlook

Mr Crippled Coot enjoys the view.

Because of the rough access road, we had the overlook completely to ourselves for the entire time Mrs Coot and I were there to visit.  I do love solitude, not to mention a good opportunity to get my truck onto a 2-track trail, so it should be pretty obvious why I enjoyed our afternoon at Beaver basin Overlook so very much.

Oh yes, the view (our pictures didn't properly capture it's beauty) is darn good too!