In September Kate and I spent the first week on Madeline island with our grandchildren and our daughters. The first four days were kids, beaches, and water. Lots of energy and enthusiasm. When they left and we absorbed some quiet time I decided to begin walking the lake. In some lists you will see the lake shore is closer to 2400 than the 1826 miles we intend to walk. This is because the island shores are also part of the lake shoreline and we are going to walk the mainland.

As preparation I decided to add Madeline and walked the 34 miles around the island. Like most of our hike this was a mix from walking the shore at Grants Point, the trails in Big Bay State Park and the Sand spit at the county park to walking roads. The percent of off road was only 20% and the amount of time I actually saw the lake was 33%.

I found that my pace was 3 1/4 miles per hour. I stopped each hour as we intend to do on the hike and took photos at each cardinal point and recorded the vegetation. This will be entered in to a data base for future hikers and researchers.