Heading out on north-west Superior on a 40 foot outrigger canoe tonight. Was ovenight sea kayaking on north-central Superior a week back. Was supposed to race a 34 foot sailboat on Superior this weekend, but a race date change put an end to that.
Taught paddling on all of the Great Lakes but for Michgan. Worked on a lake freighter on all of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence. Grew up two blocks from Lake Ontario and went to a school on the lake’s shore.
I’m lucky to live up here.
Janet, Morrigaine the cat, and I, were close to the end of a week on a remote area of Lake Superior. We had been wind bound on a lovely sand beach for several days, so our only way out was to paddle at night, when the wind was down. The autumn night was clear, with a magnificent sky of stars twinkling down on us, as we made our way past the cliffs and islands of the cold lake. Then the northern lights came out, bright and coloured and dancing across the sky. The water was as smooth as glass, reflecting the show. The only sound were those of our strokes and of Morrigaine purring. A truly magical night paddle.
Yes, you were! Admit it, you want it all for yourself - you Lake Effect Hogger! 
I just hope I can get out of here tonight, the weather is going to be decidedly sh*tty.
Are you sure you’re not thnking of Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died”? ISTR its lyrics were “Daddy was a cop on the east side of Chicago,” while Leroy Brown began with “Well the south side of Chicago is the baddest part of town.”
Anyway, they are great lakes, but you have to respect them. I used to do a lot of sailing on Lake Ontario, including a few trips from Toronto to Niagara and back, and one thing we learned fast was that even on Lake Ontario (the smallest), storms and winds can come up quickly. Great to watch from the safety of the shore, but not always from a small sailboat!
Oh my. That is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read here.
Oops - my bad.
Now how did that other song go?
If I can make it there
I’ll make it anywhere,
Chicago, that toddlin’ town!
Ha! That was weird to me too when I visited Chicago, I was always turned around because (coming from Lake Erie) the lake is always west. When I was first learning to drive as a teenager, my mom made a point of telling me if I was ever lost in the city, to drive west until I saw the water, and then I would know where I was.
Chicago does have an east side, and State Street divides east side from west. Of course, that division was made in the 19th century, when the city was much smaller. Thus, the east side is only about seven blocks wide in the downtown area.
I am totally oriented with direction in terms of where the lake is. (ok, that sentence is grammatically hideous.) Water=west. I get all messed up when I visit my sister in Chicago.
Thanks. Here’s the obligatory cat pic from later that morning in the morining mist shortly before we landed: Ships Cat
Your cat is wearing a life jacket. I need to go die of cute now.
Your cat is way too cool man. I love the witty bitty PFD he’s wearing. That’s so cute it made my teeth hurt.
squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
And north of say North Ave?
In my nearly 5 decades in and around Chicago, I’ve never heard any one or anything refer to the few blocks E of State and N of Roosevelt as “the east side of Chicago.” Any such reference has ALWAYS referred to the SE side, where the lakeshore really starts to angle to the E. Even at the furthest S, how far E can you go before hitting IN - maybe 4000 E?
Meanwhile, all the way from 87th up to Devon (7200 N), the West border is Cicero - 4800 W. And most of the N side stretches W to Austin (6000 W) or Harlem (7200 W) or even Cumberland (8000? W).
So yeah, there is an E side. But I submit that by any meaningful measure it recedes into insignificance.
Dinsdale’s right…Chicago may HAVE an east side, but no one ever calls it that. They have developed it a lot lately (around Streeterville/east of the Loop), and they are trying to get people to call it the “New East Side,” but I haven’t noticed it catching on.
I wouldn’t want the kitty on board without a PFD. Two days before, we were in 5 foot waves (with the cat below deck) for about an hour, until we gave up trying to make it out of our bay. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with finding and fishing out a cat without a bright PFD with a grab loop on it.
So off I went, about a kilometre down the beach, accompanied by the hippie’s cat. Oscar the camping cat, the hippie had told me. I laid out my kit, stretched out on the beach, and bundled into my down bag. What a sky! There had been pockets of ground fog, but a very gentle breeze off the bay from Lake Superior kept my view clear. No light pollution – just a great wide night sky above me.
Oscar decided to stay with me for the night, sniffing about, occasionally running and pouncing, and occasionally curling up on top of my sleeping bag. I breathed in the cedar scent of the groves behind me. The water in the Bay gently lapped on the shore, and high cliffs to the north and to the south were silhouetted by the stars. I could hear wind and breaking waves from the other side of the peninsula to the south. I could hear my breathing, my heartbeat.
And above me were the stars and the meteors from two separate showers. Most flew to my right, some starting with bright flashes, and some with long trails. Some flew to my left, with fewer tails, and usually not as bright. And there were so very many of them.
There I was with a cosmic cat, laying in the front seat of the spaceship, hurtling through space, into and past the stardust. I always enjoy watching ships gradually sink below the horizon as they steam away. It shows me that yes, we live on a globe. And I even more marvel at meteor showers, for they show me that our globe is indeed hurtling through space. We’re all on a marvellous ark together.
Come the hour before sunrise, the sky began to show pastels and the meteor show faded. Only a few flashes. A raven cawed from the south, and another answered from the north. Somewhere behind me, far in the distance, some Canada Geese honked. I packed up my kit, and made my way back down the beach with Oscar. There were quite a few deer tracks, a moose track, a bear track, and a wolf track. A pretty busy place for the nose of a spaceship.
Yes, I’ve used the sailbag for that purpose too. But it’s a bit more of a challenge when the swells are suddenly 4 or 5 feet, you’re on your side and being spun with the mast pointing downwind, and the water is barely 50 degrees. Or when the wind kicked up so much that when the mast was pointing into the wind and I pulled it up, it immediately flipped over the other way. :smack:
The Great Lakes are great. However some of them can be really cooold.
We were driving up the north shore of Lake Superior in July from Two Harbors, MN to what is now Thunder Bay in Canada. We drove by a really neat sandy beach and decided to stop there for our picnic lunch.
The water looked so inviting that my wife and I decided to go wading. She pulled he skirt up to her knees and I rolled up my pants legs and in we went.
I thought I was going to freeze to death.
I co-own a shop in Corfu near Darien Lake.
Dopefest you say? I really think we are the only Buffalonians here, unless others lurk deep.
Last week we took a drive around lake Superior starting in Duluth and ending up at Saulte St. Marie. The trip was incredible and we kept trying to figure out ways we could make a living if we bought some property along the shore. Our flat out favorite though, was the two days we spent camping in Pukaskwa National Park on the eastern edge of the lake on the Canadian side. It was very windy for the first night and we could hear the waves crashing from both sides of the bay for most of the night. The second night it was calm as could be. It got chilly at night, but on the way to the bathroom at night I think I saw about 6 shooting stars because of the meteorite showers. We saw Quail, Vultures, and woodpeckers as well as your usual assortment of porcupines and deer. I was amazed how many little lakes were around there, but I suppose there are a bunch here near Milwaukee. I did hope to swim but when I put my feet in I realised between the waves and the cold it would be stupid.
I keep trying to figure out a way to really live there. So far the best we can come up with is to have my husband get a pharmacy licence and open a drug store in Monument.