Lake Views - Reflections

It is difficult to get your mind around the number of lakes there are in this area. Of course, the big ones get the "lion's share" of the attention but, as we mentioned earlier, there are more than 11,000 others that dot the landscape. Many are quite large, too!!!  Well, let's back up and re-visit that for a minute or two.   Sometimes when you deal with numbers that large they lose a little of their meaning.  To put them in perspective, South Carolina - which I think of as having a good many lakes - has probably less than 300 total..  (Although we do have twelve with surface area between 7,000 and 20,000 acres.)  Illinois which also shares Lake Michigan with others has only around 1600 lakes.  So - as you can see, when you start talking about 11,000 to 20,000, that's a LOT of water!!  If you'll recall, when we visited Minnesota we pointed out that it occasionally referred to itself as the "North Star State," sometimes - "The Gopher State" but most commonly, "The Land of 10,000 Lakes."  Well, the name is well-earned - but understated.  There are actually closer to 12,000 (11,842 to be exact) lakes of more than ten acres in the state.  Now - while Michigan has fewer lakes over ten acres (6,537) it has 26,266 larger than one acre.    Whoa!!! I won't get too much deeper into the lake comparisons but think of this - if you add up all the shoreline of the lakes in Minnesota, the total is greater that the total shoreline of California, Florida and Hawaii combined!!!  Hmmmmm ....   But - what California, Florida and Hawaii don't have is - the brutally cold winters they have up here!!!!  I mentioned in the last post that there have been times when the entire 118 mile width of Lake Michigan was frozen to the point that people could make the trip from St. Jopseph's on the East coast to Chicago on the West all over the ice!!  Sometimes the combination of wind and cold result in "ice sculptures" that would make any artist proud.  The photo at the top right shows the lighthouse at St. Joseph's encased in ice and the ones below it were taken by Linda to give you a comparison of the conditions at the time of our visit.  We went through a number of lakeside communities as we meandered southward and all of them were inviting and cordial.  We spent some time exploring Holland and found that they do, indeed, celebrate their Dutch ancestry - complete with a windmill and a "Dutch Villiage."  I'm sure it would have been a lot more "active" if we had been here during the "tourist season" but - peaceful is just fine with us!!!  We had a great lunch in St. Josephs and took time out for a walk on the beach.  It seemed as though every community we went through had its own lighthouse.  They were all picturesque so there was a "photo-op" around almost every corner.  As we moved further South we continued to see well-kept residential areas with some very pretty streets and pathways.  Clearly, this would be a great place for a summer evening stroll.  Each town seems to have made a special effort to provide an attractive and convenient lakeside park for families to enjoy.  We applauded their efforts - and for a very specific reason.  Toward the southern end of Lake Michigan, where urban growth was aggressive and haphazardly controlled over the last two hundred years we began to see more and more evidence of the unfortunate and negative effects of growth without regard to the environment or preservation of spaces where people can safely enjoy nature in clean surroundings.  Frankly - the "urban blight" we saw in some places as we neared the point at which we would begin turning westward and, later, northward back toward Chicago was very disturbing and quite sad.  Some of them showed we humans at our worst.  But - I point that out for a reason.  At the same time we were seeing the terrible effects of thoughtless development we also saw tremendous signs of hope as well.  Even in the most blighted areas people are saying "enough is enough!!!"  We saw where communities were banding together to take back territory that had been allowed to deteriorate and to begin restoring it.  We saw where government, business and communities had joined hands to restore beauty and tranquility to areas that had become eyesores.  Heavily industrialized areas have been re-claimed and experiments have begun whereby National Parks now occupy former commercial areas.  One example was the Indiana Dunes National Seashore which provides a beautiful place for people to visit, picnic and camp.  It incorporates one of the most ambitious preservation efforts we have seen and it promises to be an incredibly challenging task  It involves trying to save "Mount Baldy" which is an enormous sand dune lying along the Lake Michigan shoreline.  Unrestricted traffic over the dune for many years destroyed much of the vegetation so crucial to keeping the sand in place and it has now begun to migrate inland.  They have re-planted and restricted traffic and we will just have to see how it goes!!!  Whatever the outcome, people are beginning to awaken to the fact that we cannot just sit by and let let nature, alone,  be responsible for her own defense.  We have to be soldiers in her army.  Our travels have convinced us of the value of that course.    Well - soon we will be back in Chicago for the night and then back on the plane to Charlotte.  We'll come back for some closing posts later but we have enjoyed having you with us on this wonderful trip around two Great Lakes.  Come back soon.  See ya.

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