![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
On the Great Lakes, everyone loves to see a two-masted schooner, white sails flapping in the breeze.
When three tall ships sailed onto Lake Superior in August 2008 for a maritime festival in Duluth, more than 125,000 people turned out, nearly swamping the port town.
"I was on board the Pride of Baltimore when it sailed in, and one of the crew members looked at all the people lining the canal
and said, 'Is this a holiday?' '' said Gene Shaw of Visit Duluth, which organized the festival and is hosting the only Lake
Superior stop on the 2010 Great Lakes United Tall Ship Challenge.
No summer vacation is more fun than a Circle Tour of one of the Great Lakes — and nothing is more of a pain than planning one.
Fans of sand and sun love Lake Michigan, which is lined by state and city parks with gorgeous stretches of sand and dunes. You can’t buy a better beach vacation at any price, but you have to plan ahead.
Planning is tricky because you pass through four states, 30 state parks and two big metropolitan areas, each of which floods beaches with hordes of sun-worshippers on weekends.
In the straits between lakes Michigan and Huron, you can find more than one Mackinac Island.
The best-known first was advertised as “the Fairy Isle of Mackinac’’ and is not quite rooted in reality. It has a tuxedo shop but no hardware store, a Victorian house called Brigadoon and a fan club that gathers every October in vintage clothing to revere the year 1912.
You get to that island in a horse-drawn surrey, driven by a liveryman in a top hat.
If one trip around a great lake is good, then two must be even better.
I had a great time circling Lake Superior, and I’ve always wanted to do it again. But for me, something new always trumps
something old.
I’d never been around Lake Michigan, and I’d been thinking about its attractions: The Mackinac Bridge. Gigantic sand dunes. A car ferry across the lake. And other stuff you won’t see on Lake Superior, bless its icy heart.
In summer, overheated tourists head for the Cool City.
Two Rivers, Wis., gets its nickname from cooling breezes that come from three sides: the East Twin River, the West Twin River and Lake Michigan. Swimmers can cool off with a dip from Neshotah Beach, a great strip of sand, but there’s an even better one five miles north, where Rawley Point Lighthouse towers over the dunes of Point Beach.
Two Rivers also is the birthplace of the ice-cream sundae — how cool is that?
On a summer day in Holland, Mich., all roads lead to the beach.
When we were there in June, people streamed toward this broad swath of sand until the sun fell low on the horizon, making the fire-engine-red harbor beacon glow like an ember. They ate ice cream, they strolled on the breakwall, they took a last dip in Lake Michigan.
But at 10 p.m. sharp, a police cruiser started flashing its red lights to shepherd everyone out of the park.
It’s funny that some people in the Upper Midwest spend their summer vacations on the beaches of Cancun or Cape Cod, because the best beaches in the world are in their own back yard.
Lake Michigan is America’s freshwater Riviera, a nearly unending strand of sand that looks like Florida without the high-rise condos. It’s clean, blue and pleasantly cool, with water temperatures in the 60s, and in most places it looks just like the ocean.
Add in candy-striped lighthouses and even more ice-cream stands, and you’ve got the makings of a great beach holiday — a cheap one, too, if you're on a budget.
One Great Lake east of Superior, there’s another North Shore.
It doesn’t have any craggy points or sheer palisades, and there are no agates waiting to be found. It has no waterfalls, and not a scrap of basalt; in fact, there’s nothing volcanic about it.
But this north shore, on the leeward side of Lake Michigan, has something Minnesota's beautiful North Shore on Lake Superior doesn’t have: Sand, lots and lots of sand.
