A Lake is Not an Ocean

I've met several people around here who compare the Great Lakes to oceans; I will certainly grant them that they are quite large (a sincere understatement, to be sure), but I suspect that anyone who makes such claims has never actually seen an ocean, or at least, not the Pacific, or at least, not the Pacific of the Northwest. It is quite true that the Lakes are unbelievably massive expanses of water that you can't see across, but as far as I can tell, that is where the resemblance ends. An ocean demands your attention from the minute it enters your senses, and indeed, it enters them all; the taste of salt on your lips, the smell of decaying seaweed, the mist of spray on your skin, the constant din of the ebbing and flowing waves, the sheer magnitude of sprawling sea from horizon to horizon. It shapes the land and ecosystems for miles inland; scarcely the bystander, it creates the weather. An ocean is something to be feared and respected if you have any sense at all; never before have I sat humbler than on a beach on the Olympic Peninsula. Lake Michigan, by contrast, approaches you with an unassuming splendor, to the point where you can miss it behind some trees if you don't know it's there. I feel incredibly lucky to have ridden along its shores for several days, but there was never, not for so much as a second, confusion in my mind as to what lay before me.

Lake Michigan: not an ocean.

The U.P. was not quite what I was expecting for pristine wilderness, at least where I was. I get the impression that the inland and northern areas are more untouched, but they are not really accessible by bicycle or car, and I'm okay with that; that's how it should be, really. I expect I'll get back there someday and explore Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore by backpack.

Traveling through the U.P., though, was well worth it, in that it enabled me to explore the northwest of Michigan proper. Following the Lake Michigan shoreline, I traveled down the Tunnel of Trees scenic byway, a narrow (and largely-abandoned, post-Labor Day) road that meandered through hills and forest. The forests were filled with squirrels blacker than night, certainly blacker than they have any business of being, and giant puffballs, a mushroom larger than a basketball (that I later found out to be both edible and delicious).

Giant puffballs (note the quarter for size reference).

I then hopped on a bike path that circumnavigated Little Traverse Bay (and apparently has done so since before the invention of automobiles). Traverse City led to Cadillac which led to a 100-mile rails-to-trails that took me all the way to Grand Rapids, through Lansing, through Hell, and finally to Ann Arbor. I've taken a rest day here, exploring the town and campus, visiting my dear friend Sarah (a transplant from Seattle who inexplicably decided to return to her native Midwest), and even taking in the new Harry Potter movie. Ann Arbor, in as many words, is way too hip for its own good, but it seems like a plenty nice enough place. I'm going to see what its dumpsters have to offer tonight, and then it's back on the road tomorrow.

Contrary to popular belief, it's actually paved with asphalt.

Looking at a map, it's crazy to realize that I don't have all that much farther to go before I get to Boston. Again, that's not necessarily the end of my trip, but anything after that is just icing on the cake. 1,000 more miles is looking like it ain't no thing (and that's not me bragging, I promise).