Prepare yourself for rock pictures...

I warned you, PMWSP has some pretty interesting rocks and geologic goings on!  It has the Nonsuch Shales near the bottom, metamorphosed sedimentary layers from vast old oceans in colors of black, gray, rust and pink. On top of the shales are the basalt layers laid down by a violent period of volcanic activity, all you northwesterners are familiar with that kind of action.  The massive weight of the basalt caused all kinds of tilting and sagging of the sedimentary and metamorphic layers. Then along came the glaciers to scrape and grind them down, pulverize them, and generally cause a lot of damage. At some point a LOT of lovely golden sand was created and used to decorate the shore of scenic Superior.

OK, with that possibly, sort of, accurate description, I'll tell you about our activities.  We spent one whole day walking up and down the Presque Isle River in the west corner of the park.  This small river spills down the watershed, carving its way over and through the Nonsuch Shales and patches of much softer sandstone.  The result is very beautiful and fun to explore.  

There are 3 or 4 larger falls where the river flows off of sharp edges of the shale. Most of the river is quite shallow as it spreads across the flat rocks.  The water itself is tinted brown and has a lot of foam, not because it is dirty, but because of organic matter in the soils that the water flows through.  The trails wind through the shady forest and there are frequent overlooks and places to go and wade around in the stream. This time of year it is warm and pleasant but I'm sure in the spring that river is a real rip snorter. They get a lot of snow here!  We found crawdads in the pools and some interesting invertebrate larvae that were attached, head down, to the rocks in the shallow riffles.  There were very circular holes drilled into the shale where rocks just ground the rock down during high water flow. 

As the river flowed into Superior it formed a nice big pool just daring Thayer to skinny dip in. It looked inviting but I declined to join him and was glad I didn't because, shortly after he got in, a herd of young boys and their dippy mom/aunt came down to skip rocks for half an hour. Wouldn't want to traumatize any youngsters! 

The shales in this area were really interesting because they were petrified sand ripples and were broken in such a way that you could see that each layer had a different color, direction of ripples and texture. I hope my pictures will illustrate that for you.  See if you can match the picture to something I described...

After such a vigorous day of hiking and exploring we fell asleep in our chairs and read books on the beach until the sun did another glorious dive into the lake.  Found an empty trailer parking lot near a trailhead to spend the night.  We were the only ones there besides the owls that kept me awake for a while.