By Jack Gamble

 Sea Caves  Centuries of wave action, freezing, and thawing have sculpted shorelines throughout Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Some of the Great Lakes' most spectacular scenery occurs where these forces interact with sandstone of the Devils Island Formation to create sea caves.

Ice caves  By February, an ice bridge might connect Sand Island to the mainland. The lake surface is usually a frozen white expanse. Lakeshore cliffs form a crimson red border to this arctic landscape. Pillars of ice extend to the cliff tops where waterfalls have hardened in place. Frozen lake water encrusts the base of the cliffs. Inside the caves awaits a fairyland of needlelike icicles. The formations change from chamber to chamber and from day to day.

 Sand Scapes  More than mere beaches, sand scapes are a range of features from barren sand bars to dune habitats that support plant and animal communities.

 Lake Superior Sandstone  This sandstone that is mostly red or brown in color comes primarily form the Bayfield Group of sedimentary rocks that are found near Bayfield, Wisconsin and on the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. The bass Island Sandstone is one example. the sandstone of choice in this group is mostly a red feldspathic (has feldspar as a dominant mineral) sandstone deposited as the final stage of the infilling if the Keweenaw Rift. It is presently considered to be the last Precambrian event in Wisconsin which makes it about 1040 million years old.

 Athelstane and Amberg Granites  These granites come from nearby towns in northeastern Wisconsin, just south of the Michigan border. They are similar in grain size, but the Amberg is more gray, whereas the Athelstane is more pink. They both formed as intrusive bodies of rock that formed the core or subsurface of volcanic islands some million years ago, when northern Wisconsin looked more like the Japanese Islands do today. These granites were a few of many granites quarried in Wisconsin. In fact Red Granite is the State rock.

 Fire, air and water pollution, erosion, and storms are all issues, but they change the land. Erosion destroys sandstone pillars that hold up caves. air and water pollution weakens stone structures. And fire destroys forests, but all of this changes the land, shaping the park.

 Solar panels are used  LED lighting is used  Compact fluorescents lights are used

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