Gitchi-Gami | Lake Superior
Today I’m starting a series of posts that will take us on a tour of the Great Lakes. We’ll take our time; I will have an introductory post to each lake and then subsequent related posts before moving to the next one.
We’re going to move west to east, as the waters flow, starting with Lake Superior.
As I wrote in my post “The Great Lakes as The Breakfast Club”, Lake Superior is the largest Great Lake in surface area, the deepest and the coldest.
In fact, Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake by surface area in the world, and it could hold the water from all four of the other Great Lakes plus three more Lake Eries. It is thus not surprising to learn that the Ojibwe name for Lake Superior is Gitchi-Gami, which translates to “great sea”.
Ontario, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan surround Lake Superior. The largest city on the lake is Thunder Bay, Ontario, home of many minor and major league ice hockey players and apparently the birthplace of the 60s rock band Buffalo Springfield “Think it’s time we stop children – what’s that sound… everybody look what’s goin’ down…”. The largest island in Lake Superior is Isle Royale, a national park and the site of one of the most famous ecological experiments in the world – that of the wolves and moose which I wrote about back in June. Lake Superior is large enough that it is rare for it to completely freeze over. 2014 was the last time it came close, with 91% ice coverage.
I saw Lake Superior for the first time in July 2022 when we visited Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (the UP). We were there during a heat wave and we swam in the lake off Presque Isle Park near Marquette. The water was, even at the height of summer, well, I would use the word invigorating. On the downside, I would describe skin stinging. Positively, I would describe feeling the incredible physical impact and full-body sensation of cold. It absolutely made you feel utterly alive.
If you are inspired by the idea of this incredible northern inland sea, let yourself indulge in the idea and poke around the Lake Superior Circle Tour Adventure Guide website. The tour is a 1,300 mile self guided tour all the way around the lake. RV trip anyone? Would be amazing.
My greatest Lake Superior fantasy? A future trip I’ve penciled in for Summer 2027 to Duluth, Minnesota (America’s Best Town in America per Outside Magazine in 2021 and home of the Great Lakes Aquarium) and then several days spent kayaking around the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Wisconsin. Can’t wait to see Superior again.
