The Great Lakes

We, those of us here in the Midwest…and even us Hoosiers, really have a treat living as close to the Great Lakes as we do! Indiana, being a Great Lake state is very special and through the years I have enjoyed every minute being around any of the lakes but honestly there is something special about Lake Michigan.

The Great Lakes provide 21% of the world’s fresh water and is the largest group of freshwater lakes by volume in the world; and I love this fact…if you were to build a barrier around all 48 lower states and pour the water from the Great Lakes into the barrier…it would be 9 feet deep! An easy way to remember all 5 of the lakes is this acronym; HOMES…which helps us to remember the following: H for Huron, O for Ontario, M for Michigan, E for Eerie and S for Superior. There are 8 states and Canada that border the Great Lakes but without question Michigan has the most shoreline…in fact Michigan has more shoreline than any other state with the exception of Alaska, which is some serious shoreline when you think of Florida and California.

If you haven’t made it UP North then you are really missing out on an incredible outdoor experience. September 15^th found Vickie and I headed north to Wisconsin and specifically Kenosha…which is actually just a few miles north of Illinois and Chicago; our mission was finally getting a chance to both see Lewis University (where my oldest son Harrison attends and plays golf) and then watch him golf, thus the reason we were in Kenosha. Harrison was playing Strawberry Creek which was just minutes from Lake Michigan.

We arrived late on Saturday night, giving us the entire day of Sunday to visit the lake and the many ‘cool’ areas along the shoreline of Kenosha. We weren’t the first folks down to the coastline…but we were only beaten there by a few early-bird fishermen who had my attention and were fishing from the many jetties that went in several directions into the lake. While I didn’t see anyone actually catch a fish…they were using some large plugs and making very long cast out into the lake and then retrieving much like we would locally for bass. I must admit that the more I watched the more I wanted to have my float tube and fly-rod and see what I could actually catch!

If you get a chance to visit Kenosha…do yourself a favor and make plans to visit the two beautiful museums that are located adjacent to the Kenosha Yacht Club. The Civil War Museum was our first destination and it was well worth the $7 dollar admission price. The museum was unique in that it started in 1855 and then moved year by year through to the close of the war in 1865. Each area of this large and new building focused on life in the upper Midwest during the ten year period list above. The museum had the usual civil war artifacts but the addition of large period piece murals and wax figures really brought to life how hard and how distressing the time must have been for anyone with a loved one off fighting in another state. Within the museum there was an entire section on Indiana and the civil war and while Mr. Chance and Mr. Wilson had already alerted me to the “Yankee Giant”…there was a newspaper piece that chronicled the life of 6’10 ½” inch David Buskirk of the Indiana 27^th. It is a long story but Buskirk was captured by the South and exploited for his height…all before returning back home to his farm in Gosport, Indiana.

The sister museum was a Kenosha area museum and I have to admit that I could have spent a lot more time within this museum as it had many exhibits that chronicled the lakes themselves and the different geological periods through to our last mini ice age that actually formed the Great Lakes by their withdrawal to the north. All in all you can park, walk to the downtown area, to the various water sites, to both museums and have an incredible day learning about our history and the outdoors itself.

There are nearly 150 different species of fish that call the Great Lakes their home. Some of these fish include: largemouth bass, bluegill, carp, channel cat, muskellunge, yellow perch, smelt, walleye, Northern Pike, Sturgeon, trout and salmon. While I can’t say I want to hook up with a sturgeon…or maybe even a smelt? I am looking forward to many years of fly-rodding the Great Lakes in search of a great many different species that both live within the lake and make runs up many of the grand rivers within the great lake states… I hope you take the time to point your compass north and visit the Great Lakes as we all Enjoy the Great Outdoors.