Friday, November 2, 2007

The lake


Kids, this is how Lake Michigan looked this morning. It's a pretty nice sight first thing when I'm taking Max for a spin. Once I swore I could see Michigan across the way but then I looked it up and found that the lake is 118 miles or so across, so it was probably smog or my imagination or something. You CAN however see Gary, Indiana to the south from our back pier especially at night. (Gary is a bunch of industrial smoke stacks, home of the Jackson Five and sadly, not much else.) Chicago lies on the southwestern tip of the second largest of all the Great Lakes (22,400 square miles). Lake Michigan is the only one of the lakes entirely inside of the United States and is sometimes referred to as the Third Coast with 1,600 miles of coastline. The lake is 923 feet deep at its deepest point, which is really kind of scary since, technically, a person only needs like two inches of water to drown. They are actually in the middle of a lengthy project to retrieve World War II planes from the bottom of the lake. There are still hundreds down there due to heavy Naval training during the war. Anyhow, I hope you've enjoyed this educational moment and to further boost your brain, you can click on the title above and see a cartoon demonstration of how the Great Lakes were formed.(You're welcome.) What I found most interesting about the presentation is that the lakes are slowly filling themselves in and could one day be gone! (But don't hold your breath.)

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