There were no waves crashing on shore, just a sweet breeze sighing delicately in the treetops. This would be a day to paddle. The difficulty with paddling Pictured Rocks is that you do need cooperative weather. The Lakeshore stretches fairly straight from southwest to northeast, exposed to prevailing winds across the full sweep of the Lake. Outside of Grand Island in Munising Bay, there are no sheltering islands, no safe harbors, no protected coves.
Waves reflecting off the cliffs can cause confused seas and difficult paddling.
Even the tour boat wakes get you coming and going if they catch you in too close to the cliffs, as they always seem intent on doing. Our patience was finally rewarded with calm seas under a feeble south wind and a sky like wet cotton. We put in at Miner's Beach and paddled northeast along the cliffs that rise straight and sheer up to 200 feet above the Lake. Floating there between the vast expanse of Lake Superior and those towering walls of sandstone, the kayaks seemed small and fragile craft, indeed. The cliffs did tend to draw one onward however, a linear progression as seductive as any mysteriously curving headlands.