The Great Lakes

I do! I do have particular thoughts about the Great Lakes, and specific ones among them; thank you for that question, springheel_jack.

The Lakes, in ranked order (ranked in order of their relevance to me, that is) Lake Michigan; Lake Erie, Lake Superior... I guess Lake Ontario and Lake Huron, though I never think about those two.

After moving to Evanston at age 8, I grew up by Lake Michigan. Our apartment was about eight blocks from the Lake, and Evanston has several good public beaches. My sister and I went swimming there a lot. Growing up in Madison, I was used to smaller, warmer lakes (Lake Monona, which we lived half a block from, and Lake Mendota, whose shore was one boundary of the University of Wisconsin... I used to love the Mendota Terrace, which is behind the Student Union and Rathskeller. It has these gorgeous, ridiculous and iconic chairs which have not changed since I was a little kid and probably for decades before then. I mean, I'm sure they've replaced them. But I have no idea who still makes them, now.) Okay, that aside dealt with -- I liked this new, huge, much colder lake. I especially liked it in the Spring, before the beaches were officially open, and huge storms would create GIANT waves, waves you could surf on, I swear. Most years, my sister and I would (stupidly, dangerously, illegally) go swimming when those waves came, weeks before the beaches opened. The other stupid thing I did with regard to Lake Michigan was, one December night during high school, to -- fueled by dumb emotions around a boy, story way way TL;DR -- plunge into the lake at night, in my clothes. Somehow I did not get pneumonia. I love being on boats -- or, the poor man's cruise, on car ferries. I want to take a car ferry across Lake Michigan. It's not really a long enough trip, but it would be better than the piddly short boat (and ferry) rides you can take out here on the Bay.

Lake Erie -- Lake Erie is lovely. Toledo, on its southern shore, is lovely. Their minor league baseball team, the Mudhens, are great. And there are all these awesome islands you can take ferries to, some of which had naval battles fought around them during the War of 1812! And there are vineyards! Ohio vineyards! With wine from regular grapes as well as catawba grape juice. I think the particular island we visited (one of those car vacations I took with my father and stepmother, as an adult -- I did at least two of those, and they were fantastic) was Put-in-Bay. I also very much enjoyed the labor history and American folk songs based around the Erie Canal.

Lake Superior -- also a song reference. I haven't actually ever been on Lake Superior or even seen it, except maybe in passing during The Divorce Vacation TM. But during an earlier family vacation, we camped at a place above Lake Erie, Golden Hills State Park, in New York. We weren't very far from a cliff edge, and it was very windy, and my dad not only told at least one ghost story (I think "The Golden Arm"?) but told us the story of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which has never left me. We had that Gordon Lightfoot album, and I already knew the song. But hearing the story on a cliff over one of the Great Lakes on a windy night? FRIGHTENING and AMAZING.

I love the Great Lakes. Someone out here in the Bay Area told me that they were creeped out by lakes (versus oceans, I guess). That is so weird to me. I mean, nothing against oceans; I love oceans and seas too. I love water in general. I far prefer to live near a large open body of it, one way or another.