Beverly Shores or Dune Park? I’ll be right down the road from you at the 11th street station in Michigan City.
I was raised in western Michigan, went to college in Evanston, lived for years in Chicago, and now I’m in NW Indiana. Lake Michigan has either been west, east, or north of me the whole time. Next time I move I’ll have to move to da UP so it can be south of me for a change.
I live within a stone’s throw of 20% of the world’s fresh water. Kind of an eye-opener to think that as far as fresh water is concerned, the great lakes region is the middle east.
I love it. I lived 5 years in San Diego amd 13 years in Burbank and I find this area more livable.
I’ve been thinking more about Ogden Dunes, tho I have not yet checked out the communities further east. Had some business in Gary last month and took the opportunity to drive through OD - couldn’t believe a place like that existred within commuting distance of Chicago. And the house prices and taxes are so low!
I’d love it if you’d PM me with your thoughts about the various communities.
I guess the folks posting here share my feeling that there is something attractive and romantic about navigable bodies of water. A watery horizon is one of my favorite ways to appreciate a wide natural vista seemingly clear of human intervention. And the power and impersonality of large bodies of water makes clear your individual insignificance on a large scale. Then there’s the whole idea that if you wanted, you could launch your boat, and end up somewhere far, far away - even if you only make such trips in your daydreams.
Tom - I used to work with someone from the Detroit area, who lived in the area you describe - perhaps St. Clair Shores? I recall her claiming her town had the nation’s record for the highest per capita boat ownership or somesuch figure.
Over in the Superior area here and, yes, it is fabulous and very reminiscent of sea-coastal living. However, I have to burst your bubble about the gulls. Back when I lived in Vegas, we had ‘em too, and I assure you there wasn’t anything bigger down there than little ol’ Lake Mead. Those things just show up everywhere. 
They just add to the audio and visual effects of living near coastal. They are very much a nuisance bird, whether it is the dive bombing our picnics, the droping several thousand clam shells on our patio, or just making a rucus I could live without them. I’ve got two great horned owls [fake] on our dock, and a sling shot, and a bb gun and, and nothing works. The gulls have left our dock alone now, but they just moved down on to the beach during low tides.
That’s the other thing you don’t really have, tides. So I’d imagine no low tide smellies.
Sport fishing on the Great Lakes is HUGE. A good friend of mine has a lake-worthy craft with all the assorted downriggers and such and we go pretty often.
In Lake Michigan you can catch Coho and King Salmon, Lake Trout and the occasional Brown Trout.
Here’s a picture of the salmon fillets from one of the last times we went out, with a beer bottle for scale:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8369/img0108si5.jpg
Lake Erie has been famous for walleyes for many years, and Lake Superior is beginning to ge ta reputation for the same.
The guy across the street from me has a 30-footer up in Waukegan. He goes out at least once a week, and they always limit out. Several times a year he shows up on my doorstep with a dripping plastic bag and asks if I can “help him out” because his fridge and freezer are full, and he has a double load going in his smoker. His common phrase is “these were swimming this morning.”
Or early this spring before he went out for the first time, he came over with probably 20 pounds of fillets he had frozen the previous October. He apologized that they were frozen and not frest, and promised to make up for it by bringing us fresh ones, but said we’d “really be helping him out” if we’d take them of his hands and let him clear out a little freezer space for this year’s fish. We had 4 couples over and cooked up more fish than they could eat. It was almost an embarrassment of riches - which cost us nothing other than some pleasant conversation over the years and a willingness to occassionally mow his lawn or shovel his walks when he was ill.
It’s a sacrifice, but being the good neighbor that I am, I suck it up and accept several pounds of fresh salmon fillets. And I don’t even complain that the fillets aren’t even completely deboned!
I am partial to the view of the Great Lakes from Michigan,I just love love love the water. Even when its 62F and the temp on the sand is 92F, what a glorious feeling to be in that clear bluegreen water. But just watch out for riptides, and stay off the piers during storms, the waves will beat you down and wash you off in heartbeat. The tip of the mitt has some of the best beaches anywhere!
Lake Superior doesn’t have tides, but it has something similar called seiches. From [url=“http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/nature/habitat/lakesuperior.htm”]here:
And I just want to go on record to say that I don’t understand the seagull hatred. They’re one of the prettiest and most graceful birds in my opinion.
If the weather holds, we’re going to go kayaking tonight. I’ll think of all you landlubbers while I’m out there, floating on the clear-as-glass water. I’ve been out in the kayak at times where the water is so clear and still that you get this weird effect that you’re floating in the air, not on water. You can look down and see the rocks 20 or 30 feet below you, and the water is so clear that for just a second, you sorta forget it’s there, and start to get scared you’re going to fall.
I do love Lake Superior…
They soil my dock, my yard, and my boat all summer long. It’s not that I hate them as a species but I hate the copious amounts of excrement I have to wash off the dock and boat before we have guests. We even have a “Poop Broom” for the dock. And this is no small dock, 5 foot between pilings and 65 foot long to a 30 foot finger. And there are dried up bits of Blue Crab, Spider Crab and small lobsters all over it from the nasty gulls dropping them on the dock and going down and eating their reward… I try to shoo them away when the fledglings come out so I can teach the fledglings not to mimic mom and dad on my dock!
I enjoyed your portrayal of Lake Superior with the glassy water and ephemeral yak trips. We have that too in Connecticut on Fisher’s Island Sound…right at dusk when the wind dies down and the water goes slack. Very nice. Even nicer when you catch a group of stripers bringing a shoal of shiners up to the surface and you all of a sudden notice you did remember to bring your fly rod… 
nothing better.
Just got back from Duluth (on Lake Superior) and I realized that I have seen more huge waves on that lake than I’ve ever seen on any ocean… I love the Lakes! I get a little miffed when I hear my adopted state’s motto - “land of 10,000 lakes” - because, to me, they are all ponds.
I’ve always figured you were from England. Because of the name. And were a supersized cat* that stomped cartooned houses. Imagine my surprise.
OK now I’m humming the song Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
I live 20 minutes from Buffalo and spent the weekend on a friends’ 27 foot sailboat. After enjoying four years in the Navy and going halfway around the world on an aircraft carrier, being on the sailboat is magic. Life is in the moment, all the fuss and muss of everyday life melts away.
I would love to live on the water near delphica and probably could stretch to afford it but the two hour commute would suck.
I started sailing a hobie 16 solo when I was 14. I kept my dad’s old canvas bag from the marines tied off to a nice thick rope and block. When I tipped, I’d fill up the bag with water and haul it up. All I ever had to do is get the mast pointed to the wind and haul the bag up. The bag weighed more than I did, hell, it weighed more than my dad. Check the bag on a regular basis though. I had a pretty long day when seams on the bottom of the bag blew out and I turtled in shallow muck.
[/hijack]
Where I live, we have a bumper-sticker: “There is only ONE Great Lake. TAHOE”
I’ve been to all of them. I agree with the above.
Could you clarify? Are you saying that you agree with the posts above yours discussing the quality of the Great Lakes? Or are you claiming that one mountain flanked pond is the only body of fresh water deserving the title “great”?
Don’t get me wrong, Tahoe is a very pretty area that I have no desire to denigrate. However, it is limited in its environment, lacking the broad range of conifer forest, deciduous forest, dune, and prairie shores of the Great Lakes and its one claim to fame, the Sierra Nevada, is sufficiently distant that it is not remarkably different in appearance to the Eastern Lake Superior shore where the peaks are much smaller but much closer to the shore.
There’s some good sport fishing in the Lakes, if you’re into that sort of thing, but I would never eat something that came out of them (especially not Erie) if you paid me. You might have heard that the pollutant levels in the water are much lower than they used to be, and that’s true. I’d have no hesitation about swimming in the water. But what doesn’t get so much press is the reason why the water is cleaner. When the zebra mussels invaded, they filtered out many of the pollutants, especially the mercury. But matter is conserved, and that mercury had to go somewhere. It’s now concentrated into the food chain, and more concentrated the higher up the chain you get.
The other thing to know about the Lakes is that, when you live next to one, the lake is very nearly the only factor in the weather. Among other effects, you’ll get near-constant overcast, and huge snowfalls come winter.
From March through October, Milwaukee and Chicago have sunny days more often than not.
Nah. You’re just prejudiced by having lived in NE Ohio. The only places with consistent lake effect snow are the southeast shore of Erie, the northwest shore of Michigan’s LP, and a bit on the Keweenaw peninsula. You need a prevailing wind across an unfrozen lake encountering sharply rising highlands to generate the lake effect snow.
And, as Walloon notes, the overcast days tend to be relegated to winter. Cleveland actually has more sunny days than Miami between May and October.
At the Thruway rest stop at Clarence, they have a t-shirt in the gift shop that lists “Great Ship Wrecks” of the Great Lakes (I think it’s all the lakes, not just Erie). I’m crazy-tempted to buy it, it seems like such a random topic for a t-shirt.
May I ask where (general area) you work? I’m assuming it’s in the other direction from the city.
I was also kicking around the idea of proposing a WNY dopefest at the the lake cottage next summer. Do you think there would be interest? I’m in Angola, about 30 minutes south of Buffalo.
And **Phlosphr **said something that reminded me of another thing about growing up on the Great Lakes. When I was an adult, I was out with some coworkers from the Atlantic Coast, and they were surprised that I grew up with boats and fishing and such. Again, I tried to explain that the Lakes are big. Then it was my turn to be surprised, when I mentioned waterskiing – it hadn’t occurred to me that, depending what part of the Atlantic Coast you’re from, you might not waterski. That’s another fun thing about Lake Erie. There are plenty of days when the water is too rough to ski, but many days where it is just perfect.