MARQUETTE, MI – Circling Lake Superior. The world’s largest lake. Just 200 miles north of our home in Benzonia.
It’s not been a lifelong desire. And over the years since my life started in Michigan in 1990, I’ve visited much of the Lake Superior shoreline in my home state, and a good bit in Wisconsin and Minnesota as well. It’s just this: what’s happening on the Canadian shoreline?
We had a nice break in our schedule as summer closes so we’re off. Gabrielle and I, car camping from our Kia Niro packed tight and loaded with energy and adventure.
On the benefit side of the car camping ledger is this: we’ve done long trips like this before. Twice when daughter Maggie lived in Seattle we car camped across the top of the country, close to the Canada border, setting up tents and gear in campgrounds along US Route 2. Our equipment is first rate. Eureka tent. Fold-out cots. Exped air mattresses. Propane cook stove. Cooler, cook utensils, mats. We hoist our bikes on a Thule rack. The works. Easy to set up and quick to take down.
On the risky side of the ledger is the weather. Late August and early September is when mornings are cooler and evening storms can rise up out of clear days. It already happened our second night out while camping in Petoskey State Park. It rained at 4 a.m. When we turned in for the night our weather apps disclosed nothing about an evening rain. We dried the fly and tent the next afternoon in the sun at a roadside park near Munising.
The obvious solution for mature baby boomers with time, flexibility, and solid finances is modified car camping. In effect scurrying into motels as needed. Lodging that also meets my requirement for internet so I can prepare these reports. Our first indoor stop is here in the Marquette Quality Inn, $150.00 for a room large enough to house two bikes with a decent breakfast and excellent WiFi. Today we head to Ashland, Wisconsin in preparation to bike Madeline Island for the day.
A few fun facts about Lake Superior. Circling it in a car covers roughly 1,300 miles. That’s road miles. The Canada side shoreline is nearly 1,600 miles by itself. Lake Superior spans 31,700 square miles, the largest lake by area in the world, and just a bit larger than Maine. About 673,000 people live in the towns, cities, and townships along the Lake Superior shoreline, 444,000 in the U.S. and 229,000 in Canada, according to the NOAA , the U.S. science agency. About half of that number live in one place — Thunder Bay. The lake holds 9.8 billion acre feet of water. An acre-foot is approximately 326,000 gallons. If turned on its side and drained Lake Superior has enough to drown every acre in the U.S. in four feet of water. That friends is a lot of water.
More coming.
— Keith Schneider
