![[Lake scene drawing]](http://images.midwestweekend.com/graphics/lake_scene.gif)
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.
This year, I’m planning to cabin-camp my way around Lake Michigan, which is lined by state 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
