Door Peninsula Lake Michigan

Here is a white cedar clinging to the rocks on the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin. The Door Peninsula is part of the Niagara escarpment, sedimentary rock laid down during the time when saltwater seas covered the area where the Great Lakes freshwater now flows.

The Bruce Peninsula in Canada is also part of the Niagara escarpment. I have enjoyed hiking on both peninsulas. Fossils may be found in these rock formations and the cedars may be very old, but not very large. They seem to dare the wind and waves to knock them over.

For more info about the Great Lakes please read The Dynamic Great Lakes

Also visit the Lakeshore Museum on Clay in Muskegon.  There are  new displays showing the various life forms that lived in the Great Lakes region in ancient times when there were salt water seas, Ice Ages, and the present.

All Great Lakes Connected

The Great Lakes are a marvelous freshwater system shared by the United States and Canada.  Only Lake Michigan is entirely within the United States.

Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario are all connected and have their outlet through the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. 

Many shipwrecks lie on the bottoms of these powerful lakes.  The cold fresh water preserves them but since zebra mussels entered the lakes accidentally, these shipwrecks are encrusted with them.  It is illegal for divers to take things from these shipwrecks.

There are places where glass bottomed boats will take tourists to see what lies below.

The Dynamic Great Lakes non-fiction

Everything you wanted to know about the Great Lakes but were afraid to ask.  This book is available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and many independent bookstores such as the Bookman in Grand Haven, MI, Schuler’s Books and Music in Grand Rapids and many other places.

The Great Lakes Rock

From the round surf-polished rocks of Lake Superior’s shore to the sand dunes of Lake Michigan, I have roamed and picked up stones: agates, pudding stones and some bearing copper or fossils.  And I hiked the alvars on the Door Peninsula and Ontario’s Bruce with their layered limestone shores bearing fossils of ancient salt seas.   Lake Huron’s green waters pour into Lake St. Clair and its silty marshes and then to Lake Erie teeming with birds and fish. The waters pick up speed in the Niagara River to take a tremendous plunge over Niagara Falls.  The rock underlying the falls will wear away in time I am told, but not in my life time.  Lake Ontario’s flat shores have good soil for vineyards and farm lands.  Sailors and sports fishers enjoy Lake Ontario’s riches and the lake flows out through the St. Lawrence River with a myriad rocky islands.
Read more about the Great Lakes in my critically acclaimed book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.