Pictured Rocks Boat Tour: Returning Nearly 30 Years Later

We recently headed north to Marquette for a pretty special reason. My daughter was getting married at the Landmark Inn!

Of course, when you gather our family in the Upper Peninsula, we are not going to spend all of our time at the hotel. We golfed, wandered around downtown Marquette, checked out the ore docks, explored Black Rocks, and squeezed in as much sightseeing as we could.

And some of us made the trip over to Munising for a Pictured Rocks boat tour.

For me, this particular adventure came with a whole lot of memories.

Back to Pictured Rocks, Almost 30 Years Later

The last time I took a boat tour along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore was during the summer of 1998.

That was the last big family vacation we took before our oldest, and only daughter, headed off to college at the University of Michigan. We spent a long vacation exploring the Upper Peninsula together, visiting places that I will be writing about in future articles.

Nearly 30 years later, we were back in the Upper Peninsula for that same daughter’s wedding.

Funny how life comes full circle sometimes.

There was, of course, someone very important missing from our 2026 adventures. My husband, Steve, passed away in 2012. But his memory was very much a part of the weekend. There were a couple of special shout outs to him during our exploring and the wedding, and our return to Pictured Rocks brought back even more memories.

Apparently We Didn’t Photograph Scenery in 1998

Before writing about our latest Pictured Rocks adventure, I thought it would be fun to dig out the photos from our 1998 boat tour.

I was excited to see what I had captured almost 30 years ago.

The answer?

Not much.

There were only a handful of photos from the boat tour, and almost every one was focused on the family rather than those enormous, colorful cliffs we had supposedly gone there to see.

Thankfully, I did find one photo of Steve holding Alex, our youngest, on the boat. If you look behind them, you can even see a little bit of Pictured Rocks.

Apparently, photographing the actual attraction was optional in 1998.

We did much better in 2026.

With plenty of adults armed with cameras and phones, we came home with family pictures AND lots of photos of the cliffs, rock formations, waterfalls, Lake Superior, and scenery along the way.

Progress!

This Time, Patrick Was the Dad

One of my favorite parts of this trip was watching my son Patrick bring his own family to Pictured Rocks for the first time.

His wife grew up in Massachusetts, and they now live in Virginia Beach, so family trips to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula do not happen very often.

That made watching their children experience the boat ride even more fun.

Patrick had been one of the kids on our 1998 trip. Now he was the dad, telling his own children about riding the boat with his dad and sharing stories about the fun they had together.

Suddenly, this wasn’t just a boat tour.

It was Patrick sharing memories of Grandpa Steve with the next generation while cruising past some of the same cliffs we had seen together nearly 30 years earlier.

Those are the kinds of moments you don’t really plan. They just happen.

And you remember them.

Kids Ask the Best Questions

Anna and Bray, ages 9 and 7, had LOTS of questions.

They wanted to know about the lighthouses. They were curious about the different colors running through the cliffs. Then they started talking about the minerals they could see in the layers of rock.

Wait a minute.

They’re 9 and 7.

I don’t remember learning much about geography until upper elementary school. Apparently things have changed!

It was fun listening to them look at the cliffs and try to figure out what they were seeing.

Pictured Rocks is impressive when you are an adult, but seeing it through the eyes of kids who are experiencing it for the first time makes the trip even better.

Showing Off Michigan to Our Scottish Guest

We also had an international traveler along for the adventure.

Johnny, one of the groomsmen, came all the way from Scotland for the wedding.

Patrick met Johnny and Dom, the groom, when Patrick spent a semester studying in Scotland. Who would have guessed that more than ten years later, his friend Dom would be marrying Patrick’s sister?

Life has a funny way of connecting people.

Since Johnny had traveled all the way from Scotland, we figured we should show him a little of what makes Michigan special.

Now, Scotland has thousands of years of history, castles, ancient sites, dramatic landscapes, and buildings that are just a little older than anything we have around here.

We weren’t going to compete with castles.

But natural beauty?

I’ll happily put Michigan’s Upper Peninsula up against just about anywhere on the other side of the pond.

After seeing Pictured Rocks from Lake Superior, Johnny agreed the boat ride was definitely worth the trip to the States.

We’ll take that as a win for Michigan.

A Much Smoother Ride Than I Remembered

There was another pleasant surprise waiting for me on our 2026 boat tour.

The ride was MUCH calmer than I remembered.

I grew up on a lake and don’t normally get seasick, but during our 1998 Pictured Rocks tour, I remember getting a little queasy.

Not this time.

Maybe it was the weather. Maybe today’s boats handle Lake Superior differently. Whatever the reason, I was perfectly happy with the smoother ride.

Lake Superior is beautiful, but I prefer admiring the cliffs without wondering what my stomach is planning to do next.

Some Places Are Worth Returning To

When the boat tour was over, we headed back to Marquette and eventually everyone gathered at the hotel again.

Then came one of the best parts of a family adventure.

Comparing pictures.

Telling stories.

Finding out what everyone else had done.

Laughing about the things that happened along the way.

Our 2026 trip to Marquette was centered around a wedding, but it became much more than that. We explored new places, returned to old favorites, introduced another generation to the Upper Peninsula, shared a little bit of Michigan with a visitor from Scotland, and remembered someone who had been part of our adventures so many years ago.

And Pictured Rocks gave us a pretty spectacular place to do some of that remembering.

I’ll be sharing more from our 2026 Marquette adventures, along with stories and photos from that 1998 Upper Peninsula vacation.

After digging through those old pictures, I’m curious to see what else I find.