Iona's Beach Scientific and Natural Area — Attraction in Silver Creek Township

Heres the deal: The parking lot you turn into offers access to both Iona's Beach and Two Harbors protected Beach Access. It's confusing as heck, but both are incredible and worh a visit. When you turn into the parking lot, you will have an opportunity to very quickly turn to the left. This takes you to a parking lot with signage for Iona's Beach. There is a path that you can follow right to the beach. It is quite expansive and is almost exclusively pebbles that are a brownish red. They are rhyolite pebbles and tinkle when displaced by the waves. If you were looking for the singing Beach, you want that first left turn in the parking lot. There are veritable dunes of pebbles. If you aren't thinking to yourself "dude, this place is huge", you are probably not in the right place.

If you do not take that first left turn in the parking lot and continue on, you dip down a bit into a different area of the parking lot. If you get out and walk to the left of the boat launch, you will also see a path. This path leads to the two harbors protected beach access. This is not quite as easy of a path as the one to Iona's Beach. It is paved quite a bit of the way, and most people will access it just fine, but it does terminate in a bit of a washout, so having someone to give you a hand down and then reciprocating or perhaps bringing your favorite walking stick will be handy. This path does have several opportunities to veer off to the right that terminate in very beautiful upper overlooks, (that do not have any kind of fencing, so if your kids are risk takers.. maybe skip that or keep em close) but if you're looking to get straight to the beach moving straight along the path is the way to go. The path forward terminates at the beach. You wont miss it. However, there is a smaller path that picks up just to the left of that at first swale. If you don't mind walking through a bit of innocuous vegetation, the washout at the end of the smaller path is slightly less steep. This beach has flat rocks that you can sit on and look out over the waves, some beautiful cliffsides and a variety of sand and black and red pebbles. Pebbles start out fairly coarse where the path terminates and then you get finer and finer until they turn into sand as you move along down the beach towards north cliffs. When we were there there were a variety of stunning wildflowers and some fantastic logs to stand in as nature's benches as you take in the waves. These red rocks are also ryolite, but theeses also quite a bit of basalt and some others as well. They do have some displacemnt tinkle, but not like Iona's simply due to the sheer volume of rhyolite...

OK...of note....this is the ONLY time we have been here. We went to Black Beach first and it was awesome. Beautiful, dozens of people enjoying the beach, picnics, photo ops, very picturesque. We left there and drove directly to Iona Beach. When we pulled in we questioned why the parking lot was empty. The walk to the beach was along a beautiful wooded path less than a 1/4 mile.

My wife mentioned being buzzed by a couple of mosquitos on the path. (We had sprayed ourselves down with bug spray.) We got to the beach and it was beautiful, just as you see in the pictures. We were anxious to walk down to the waters edge.

Here is where it gets almost surreal. I stepped out onto the rocks first and my wife immediately told me my back for covered in mosquitos. I brushed my shirt and took out the OFF Spray. I was immediately swarmed by thousands of mosquitos. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. Huge cloud of mosquitos. I ran fast 50 feet or so down the beach and they instantly swarmed me again. The OFF seemed like food to them. After running back and forth a view times to no avail I headed back to the path. Thinking we might be ok there, after all, we weren't swarmed til we stepped on the rocks.

Oh, I did quickly run back out and snapped one picture of the beach while running. Then we RAN as fast as we could back to the parking area. Every time we slowed down we were swarmed again. My wife jumped in the car but when I stopped to open the door, again, a HUGE cloud of mosquito's swarmed me. I ran as fast as I could out into the parking lot and then back to the car and opened the door and jumped in. At 62 years old my wife was laughing, said she had not seem me run like that years.

NOTE: I was a summer camp counselor for years, a boy scout, my family were avid campers growing up, we have been to 48 states, camped in many of them, with and without tents. I have been swarmed by mosquitos before. This was EXTREME....again, like a scene from a horror movie. This was more mosquitos than I have ever seen in one place at one time, EVER. Hope this was a one off event that no one else experiences but it will be a story told in our family for generations to come.

We laughingly asked ourselves what the Iona "Scientific and Natural Area"...

Beautiful "Pink Beach" as the locals refer to Iona's. Nice parking area with section of the paved Gitchi Gami State Trail connected, walk down this to the dirt path, remember to use the shoe scrubber or wash your shoe soles with your water bottle before heading down to the beach. As you get closer the trail will change to rocks. Take as many photos and videos as you want but leave the rocks alone. Listen to the sounds they make as you walk and as they are washed by the waves. The edge of the beach has Raspberry bushes and many other native berries and wild Hazel nuts, you are in a wilderness area and might see birds, squirrels, bears etc feeding if you are at a low visitor volume time of the day. Deer also come down to drink at the Lake. The color of the rocks and beach scene changes depending on the weather and lighting. I enjoyed watching the bumblebees foraging in the wildflowers on the little bluff and some of the lake birds during my shirt visit this week. Make sure to have good walking shoes as it's a very uneven surface, slippery if wet and as temps drop becomes ice covered pretty easily. There is an old iron bridge further up the paved trail that gives a good view of the beach. The trails would allow a wheel chair to get down to the beach in good weather but the rocks on the beach may be too much unless you have the bigger inflatable style action wheels. Just near the parking area is a marine dock for water access and sightseeing from our on the Lake looking back at the beach. The parking lot has memorial benches by the trail. It can be a nice picnic spot and place to burn off some...