Walking the shore, without having to detour inland.
There are several river mouths on the Michigan side (Kalamazoo, Grand) that I know will require a detour inland to cross a bridge (I don’t mind swimming up to about 100 yards, but I don’t want to get minced into litle bits by the boat traffic).
I also think the industrial parts of Indiana could be a problem–does anyone know how accessible it is around Gary? The Dunes are good but between there and Illinois it looks problematic.
Also, there was an article in the Tribune this week that indicated that scattered bits of the lake shore in Chicago are in private hands. What does this mean? There are private homes on the lake in Michigan, but the shore itself up to some level of tideline is public. Is this the case in Chicago? Wisconsin? If private property means a building built right up to a seawall then I might have to leave the shore there too unless I could wade/swim/hang onto the seawall. I think I could manage something similar around the seawall that is the Point in Hyde Park, for instance.
I would plan to walk the Mighty Mac Bridge, so that too takes me away from the shore/water, but I’ve always wanted to do that.
I’ve driven all the way around, but I take it you want to walk right along the shoreline?
I think you should be able to, as you say the public owns the area up to the natural high water line. I believe that is a federal law, I know for sure it is true in Wisconsin because I take advantage of it for duck hunting all the time.
Private property may be a constraint, but if lake Mich is anything like the ocean, anyone can walk below the hig tide line, no matter who owns the beach…below the hightide line is federal property, or domain…granted Lake Mich won’t have tides but it may have clauses.
The Great Lakes don’t have such significant tides that there is that much involved.
Different states define the property holder’s rights differently. Ohio is involved in a big battle with property holders along Lake Erie, in an attempt to exercise control over what gets done along the actual waterline.
And, contrary to your assertion, the federal government does not own any of the land between the high tide and low tide marks. However, in several states, that is considered public property, or an area of public easement.
I don’t think you can walk around Lake Michigan, though, unless you intend to do something interesting about the Mackinac Straits…
I did some work in a steel mill not far from Gary. They aren’t going to let you onto their property. If you somehow managed to avoid security, you are going to be inside of a working steel mill, which isn’t the safest place to be if you don’t know what you are doing. They dump a lot of slag from the mill near the shore which won’t be easy to walk over. Plus, they have a bunch of machinery and facilities right on the water.
You’d have to go a fair distance (either out into the water or inland) to get around them, and that’s just one site. There’s two other steel mills in that area, plus a lot of other industrial stuff.
I live right on Lake Michigan, and am a riparian property owner. And despite my friend and neighbor August West’s statement, the public does not have automatic access to the lakeshore in Wisconsin. To the lake, yes. But not the shore.
That is because Wisconsin gives first right of use of the land between the high water mark and the actual water to the adjacent property owner, not to the public. So said property owner can legally forbid trespassing on it.
This is different from the other great lake states, and will probably end up in court again someday. But the above arrangement was set down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the 1930’s.
Cites can be dug up later if someone is really interested. Our local Lakeshore League of property owners keeps close track of this stuff.
I bet this one is indeed a problem–but even then the google map indicates “Rosemary Beach” and a big sandy shore strip past the site, only a corner of which touches the beach. If they want to stop terrorist jetskis, there would have to be boating ban too–otherwise you could swim there because depth typically increases pretty graduallly along the west Michigan coast.
I don’t know what to do about Indiana.
brewha–Thanks for the beer–with sommer sausage, I hope. Cutting across would be slacking–the Door County leg should be one of the highlights of the trek.
I figure it would take 3 summers to do the job–winter in the UP would stop me too
Right, I was unsure what the actual verbage was, but here in Connecticut I can walk anywhere I’d like at low tide, and not go above high tide line. Various Mansion owners and others have fought this and lost.
What % of the Wisconsin side is shallow enough to wade? Can’t keep my feet wet (withot a squirt bottle) on a sheer 20 foot bluff over deep rocky water. Oooh–maybe I could do those parts in the deep winter when it freezes over–that’s the wet feet concept at least in principle. (I would count walking the cliff hugging the shore as okay for my walk, but it sounds like WI property owners could possibly block me from doing so.)
These days, with the water level low, I’d say “most of it”. I can only speak for my area, which is low dunes with the lakebluff about a half mile inland. But even the areas with the bluff right by the water’s edge have a fairly nice stretch of beach these days.
Go on google maps and cruise up and down the lakeshore, and I bet you can get a better idea of where problem areas could be.
Thanks for the link, GFactor.
As a property owner, I do like my privacy. But I understand the public’s view on it, too.
I just wish the jetskiiers would stop buzzing around within a quarter mile of shore over the same halfmile of lakefront, and use some of the rest of our 400 x 90 mile lake.
Um, just out of curiousity, would you record your discussions for us, please? You end up discussing so many interesting and odd things (to say nothing of the interesting and odd things that happen to you! ) that I for one would just love to be a bug on your wall!
That or a drinking buddy.
Which, come to think of it, given where you live, isn’t that far-fetched!! :eek:
) that I for one would just love to be a bug on your wall!