fresh water lake in the world.

The drive around it is 1,300 miles.

I start in Duluth, Minnesota and head northeast to Thunder Bay in Canada.

After that, there are only small towns for 400 miles, until we cross back into the U.S.In Houghton Michigan with a little luck, I'll fly to Isle Royale National Park in the lake.

I hope I make it.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman , was provided by Agnese Haury.

♪ music ♪ ♪ music ♪ ♪ music ♪ This is not the Pacific Ocean in the Olympic Peninsula, it's not the Atlantic Ocean in Maine.

This is Lake Superior.

I can drink the water safely, but I will never go swimming in it.

The temperature is 45 degrees in August.

This lift bridge is one of the two This lift bridge is one of the two access points to the port of Duluth.

You can hear the cars crossing it because the deck is made out of metal.

Massive barges come and go under the bridge.

They generally take away grain, ore, minerals and other food stuffs from all of Southern Canada and the Western United States.

What they bring in, depends upon the needs of the consumers here in Duluth and Canada far to the West.

Duluth is a city of about 100,000 people and as it was a hundred years ago, it's still a major port, a major shipping port.

It's hard to imagine that the vast barges come 300 some miles across fresh water and to conceive of a lake that contains 10% of all the world's fresh water, is beyond my imagination but there it is and Duluth is the place we first run into it from the western side.

It's Saturday afternoon and late summer on the shores of GitchiGummi and a little stream coming into the lake, a few people are swimming.

But out in the surf, nobody is in the water.

Not a soul.

Not even in a wet suit.

The reason?

The water temperature, 52 degrees.

The next town of any size is Thunder Bay in Canada.

After that, there's a lot of wilderness.

Thunder Bay is the largest city on all of Lake Superior, as well as the tenth largest city in the province of Ontario, Canada.

For many years it was the largest grain exporting port in all of North America.

More recently, it has become a stepping off place to the wild forest and wild lands of northern Lake Superior.

Once you're north of Thunder Bay you can go for miles and miles and find no place to stay for the night.

The safest thing to do, is to camp.The best instrument for driving the stakes is a good round, water polished Lake Superior rock.

The trouble is with tents like this, you need about five or six at least.The most prominent landmark in the Western part of Lake Superior is Sleeping Giant Mountain.

You can see the head at this end, and the feet at this end.

It is extremely important in first nation's mythology, first nation's in Canada are what are referred to as Indians in the United States.

Everywhere you go, there are references to Sleeping Giant.

You can't stay here without being amazed at it.

Marie Louise Lake is located not far from Lake Superior.

Where I come from, this would be an enormous lake, but here it's one of thousands and thousands of lakes.

It's popular for recreation because the water is gentle and fairly warm.

So that makes it great for fishing and even for swimming, which is impossible in Lake Superior.

swimming, which is impossible in Lake Superior.

The main way to get across Canada by vehicle has been the Trans-Canada Highway for a century, for a long time.

But it wasn't until 1960, that paved road was possible all the way around Lake Superior and through Canada.

Lake Superior has over 1,000 tributaries, creeks, rills, streams and rivers.

Each one of them creates its own entry way.

Sometimes through a fault in three billion year old bed rock.

The rock here is part of what's known as the Canadian shield.

It has some of the oldest rocks on Earth, billions of years old, but the landscape we see is young and it's young because 10,000 years ago this was covered by a glacier nearly a mile thick and there was no vegetation, as the glacier retreated, it carved, it scraped, it tore out from the Earth, pockets that formed smaller lakes and bigger lakes.

Lake Superior also appeared at that time.

For by a huge flow of plugged material that filled up a canyon and here we have the largest lake on Earth and thousands of smaller lakes, all result of the action of that huge glacier.Lake Superior is called superior because the French labeled it the biggest lake which is what it means in French and they were right.

It's not only the biggest lake here, it's not only the biggest of the great lakes, it's the biggest fresh water lake in the world.

The town of White River is inland from Lake Superior.

It only has 1,000 people but it has a special place in history.

In 1914, a Canadian solider purchased a black bear cub here and took it with him in his platoon to Europe.

Ultimately, he left it at the London Zoo, where a few years later a man by the name of A.A. Mills saw the bear and grew very found of it, as did his son.

His name was Christopher Robin and from there came the stories of Winnie the Pooh.

Winnie was named after Winnipeg Canada and she was a female.

For about 10 months of the year the hazard in Canada on the road is ice and snow but in the summertime the hazard is moose.

They get in the middle of the road, and here's a calf.

His mother is gotta be somewhere by, they can be mean mothers if they're protect... oh there she comes, there, there she comes.

She does not run like a gazelle.

I hope that that calf has learned that it's not a good idea to stand in the middle of the highway.

So a cow like that will weigh over half a ton.

Woof, they made it okay, another moose encounter on the highways of Lake Superior.

Wawa, Ontario is a town of about 3,000 people.

It's hard to know what's more important here, the drag races that occur every August.

The placards that honor historic members of the community or the enormous goose.

This sculpture of a Canada Goose is supposedly made from 4, 400 lbs of iron.

The goose is an emblem of the Canada goose and the tame of the town Wawa is supposedly derived from the Ojibwe word for the sound the goose makes when it hits the water.

We follow the migration route of the geese, south to the U.S border.

Nearly 500 miles from where we entered Canada.

There's a two-mile long bridge that connects Canada and the U.S across the St. Marys River and the Soo canals.

One end's in Canada, the other end's in the United States.Oh wow, look at the back up.

It may be a while.

You can get a great view of the canal and the river and understand why they had to build the locks to keep from having to portage all the stuff that came out of the boats, from one level of 21 ft into Lake Superior.

The canals make it a lot easier.The U.S side of the canals is the best place to see the operation.

There are not a lot of boats come through but if I'm lucky, one may be here.

They've announced it will arrive soon.

So I gotta hurry to get my place in line.

Lake Superior is right at 600ft elevation.

The St. Lawrence river where it meets the Atlantic is at sea level.

So somehow those ships have to be raised, 600 ft to make it to Duluth and Thunder Bay so it's a series of locks and this is the last one here only 21 ft. but it makes all the difference in the world if you can have a ship that you don't have to unload and reload, that's what locks are for.

This is one of the first ships built specifically to fit in to the Soocanals here.

They were remolded in 1968.

After a huge delay, because each time a contract would be let to enlarge the canals, the ship builders would demand a larger canal, which they are still doing.

Right now what we see has been in place since 1968 but there is now a demand for a much bigger canal.

Everyone wants to do it but the cost is going to be enormous.

So for now this ancient boat, the James R. Barker is as big as it can get through the canal.

From the Soocanals and the border, it's a long ride west to Houghton, Michigan, a major town on Michigan's upper peninsula and a mighty pleasant place to visit in warm weather.

In the early 20th century, Houghton was a copper mining center that used the lake for transporting ore and metal.The slag from the production of copper gives an unusual appearance to a landscape.

The copper ore is heated very hot in a crucible, a couple 1,000 degrees.

The copper melts and comes to the top and gets poured off then the rest of the crucible, they bring to the top of the slag heap and pour it over and it cools very rapidly, producing a rock that is very similar to obsidian.

It is sharp, it is very, very hard and it's mirror like.

It is sharp, it is very, very hard and it's mirror like.

Houghton, Michigan was very prosperous from the production of copper.

It is also extremely cold in the wintertime, so it doesn't come as a surprise that there would be hockey here.

Local people claim it's the birthplace of professional hockey.

It was home to the first team in the National Hockey league, the Portege Lakes, beginning in 1901-1902.

They beat everybody in site and until the 1920s they were top dogs but gradually given the rise of hockey elsewhere, uh they fell into, well, oblivion.

There are only two ways to get to Isle Royale national park, by boat or faster way by plane, uh, seaplane.

There's the coastline, it's thirty minutes over the water, about 70-75 miles of nothing but pure Lake Superior and then we wind up at Isle Royale National Park.

I've never been there, I haven't talked to many people who have been there.

So it's new.

So now I've been dropped off in Isle Royale.

It's a national park and it's distinct among the national parks and there are no roads.

It's very long.

The Island is over 50 miles long.

It's got 165 miles of trails and that's how you get around.

There are no roads to drive on, no vehicles.

If you want to get somewhere, you walk or you take a canoe and you kayak.

So you're here, you're dropped off.

You're on your own.

The thing that makes Isle Royale National Park distinct is probably the fact that it's an island, in the middle of a giant lake.

That separation is really what sets this place apart and makes it a really special place.

It's not easy to come here.

And it also sets the visitor apart.

The visitors we get here are very special.

We get a different type of visitor.

Visitors that feel very attached to the place and visitors that return a lot.

On Isle Royale you can get from one place to the other in two ways.

You can walk or you can get on a boat.

We're on a park service boat.

We're heading for Raspberry Island.

I suspect there are raspberries there.

There are a lot of different kinds of berries here.

The main island itself is Isle Royale, it's about 45 miles long and about 8 miles wide, at its widest point.

But there's a number of barrier islands that make up the archipelago and Raspberry island is a really cool place right near Rock Harbor that is a great opportunity for people to go and visit and see inland bog as well as walk out on the south shoreline and take a look at rocks and the geology.

The largest lake on Isle Royale is Siskiwit Lake and Siskiwit Lake is around, is on the southern side of the island, kind of in the middle and it is known because there is an island in the middle of Siskiwat Lake, which people like to refer to it...it's Ryan Island and people refer to Ryan Island as the largest Island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in North America.

So while this is known as Raspberry Island, this is actually probably the only raspberry that you'll find here.

There are no longer raspberries on Raspberry Island.

But some of the plants we do have, this is the bunchberry.

It has this cluster of red berries here.

Bunchberries is also known as a Canada dogwood and in the early summer, May and June, the Canada dogwood has these very tiny flowers and they are known for being the fastest opening flower on the entire planet.

Yeah they actually explode open.

So the boardwalk gives us a really convenient way to access this bog right in the middle, without getting our boots soaking wet or destroying the bog environment.

But there's a couple of plants that I want to show you here that are really awesome.

One of my favorite parts of the bog is carnivorous plants and we've got two really good ones right here.

We have a picture plant, which you can see... A picture plant, finally!

...is right here.

And then you can see this is the flower of the picture plant and then these little pictures right here are where the eating takes place.

The bog is a very fragile place and here you can see where someone, in violation of rules, stepped off and it has caused this scar.

It's been here for a few years and will probably be here for 60 years.

It takes that long for it to recover.

So moose do come to this island, it's not very big.

How do they get here?

Well, they swim across from the main island Swim?

They do swim.

They're excellent swimmers actually.

They're very natural.

And you can see this is evidence that moose have been here before us, we're following behind them.

A very large pile of moose skat.

Isle Royale is really unique in, as you've noticed.

We have a lot of different moss and lichen here.

And on the island we actually have over 600 species of lichen and moss.

This cover that you see hanging off all of the trees is called Old Man's Beard.'

Good name.

And here's sphagnum moss that is just so strange to be able to stick your hand down in there, something I've read about but not seen.

And the sphagnum moss is, you know, separate from the lichen.

This is a blue beaded lily, not the flower but the fruit.

The flower is a beautiful yellow in the shape of a lily.

But this is the fruit and it looks like a blueberry, apparently people will pick them thinking 'aha wild blueberries' and get an unpleasant surprise.

So we'll follow this trail around and it will take us up and over onto the rocky south shore.

The most important thing for me is the geology of this place, we have billion year old lava flows that sculpted the island, created the island, and then the island was sculpted by recent glaciers from about 2 to 3 million years to as late as 10 and a half thousand years.

So it's a very new place with it being only ten and half thousand years that it was really sculpted.

So this is the best part of the island, I think, is this awesome view as you come out of the forest.

You can see that having this as your backyard is pretty awesome.

So Dave we're walking on basalt lava flows, but these...

These gotta be really old!

Yeah, these basalt lava flows are over a billion years old.

And so they formed all of Isle Royale, all the ridges you see on Isle Royale are basalt lava flows.

The center of the lava flows was actually in the middle of what's The center of the lava flows was actually in the middle of what's now Lake Superior and the lava poured out in each direction.

now Lake Superior and the lava poured out in each direction.

So the park service fellows are taking us sort of on the western part of the Isle Royale, up to a lookout.

It's close, it's only 1.7 miles away and it's up hill both ways but we go fast.

After a journey around Lake Superior, there's no more fitting place to end than on top of a high ridge, up on a fire tower on an island in the largest lake in the world.

From here on the deck of the fire tower, I can see almost the entirety of Isle Royale.

If I use my imagination, I can see the southern shower of Lake Superior about 75 miles away.

And from this corner, I can see Canada and way in the distance Sleeping Giant, where I spent the night but on the other side.

It's mid August in Isle Royale National park and it's green here.

Soon the leaves will turn and then fall.

On the first of November, the park will close.

Winter will set in and all around Lake Superior a bitter cold will fall.

And only the hearty will remain behind.

Nicaragua sits in the middle of Central America.

Its often-troubled history has been dominated by political intervention from the north and geological forces from within, earthquakes and volcanoes.

Join us next time In the Americas , with me, David Yetman.

Why would you let him eat off your plate Dave.

Because I'm done.

[music] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman , was provided by AgneseHaury.

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