Michigan - The "Great Lakes" State

Michigan truly is a "Water Wonderland."

Michigan is home to the 5 Great Lakes - Lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior.

There's also the "new math", that tell us of a sixth Great Lake... A tiny little lake in Vermont named Champlain. Don't you be the fool!!!

Because this lake shares the same natural disaster as the 5 Great Lakes, namely Zebra Mussels, the folks in Vermont figured that they were entitled to some federal $$$ to help clean up their problem. Then only way they could get their hands onto these federal funds was by getting Billy to sign a bill giving Lake Champlain the official designation of "Great Lake." This is just what happened on March 6th, 1998. Hopefully, the good people of the U.S. will accept Lake Champlain as a Great Lake about the same time that they fully embrace the metric system - in other words, it just 'aint gonna happen. There are no iron ore barges on Champlain, no twenty-foot waves, no songs by Gordon Lightfoot. Size wise, there is NO WAY that Lake Champlain is a Great Lake - you can drive a golf ball across it in areas. On an overcast day, you can see with the naked eye from one side to the next. In the words of U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, Lake Champlain is "a pencil line on a map."

Still not convinced? Well, the smallest of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario, is almost 15 times larger than Lake Champlain @8-)

So, just how big is a Great Lake? - Let's take a look at Lake Superior. Measured by surface area, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world. It is 350 miles long, 160 miles across at its widest spot, and more than 1,300 feet at its deepest spot, which is about 35 miles north of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. There is so much water in Lake Superior that, if drained, the water would fill a swimming pool the size of the continental United States to a depth of nearly five feet. Every now and then this staggering fact gets some capitalist fools into thinking that we should build a pipeline to the West, so that after the residents of California have wasted the Colorado on swimming pools and golf courses they can start using Michigan water. Well, go talk to Vermont - we're not giving any away, EVER!!! Hello Las Vegas - Michigan has it's own casinos... If you waste the Colorado, don't come crying to us. As for SoCal, green grass wasn't meant to grow in the desert - DEAL WITH IT. Come to Michigan if you want lush, green, golf courses.

Michigan boasts more miles of freshwater shoreline than any other state and has more than 11,000 inland lakes.

Of course, Michigan has more than just the Great Lakes - we've got rivers too. In fact, you are never more than 6-miles away from a river when you are in Michigan. Be sure to grab your rod and reel if you're coming to Michigan, and don't forget to pick up that State Fishing License too. My favorite catches include smallmouth bass, northern pike, walleye, brook and lake trout, whitefish, steelhead, and coho salmon.

Finally, we have waterfalls in Michigan. The vast majority of these are found in the Upper Peninsula, where there are over 200 naturally occurring waterfalls which have been named on a DeLORME map. Michigan is home to the second largest waterfall east of the Mississippi River, the Upper Tahquamenon Falls, which are eclipsed only by Niagra Falls. The true beauty of Michigan waterfalls is that they tend to be much less "touristy" than Niagra - most of the falls found in Michigan require at least a 1/2 mile walk from the trailhead just to see them.

Strictly Michigan
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