Monroe — As I watched a peaceful sunrise over Lake Erie, I couldn’t have known that by evening I’d be enduring torrential rain, hurricane-level wind gusts, and the sky-shattering thunder of a Lake Superior gale. Something else I didn’t know: My brother had lost my tent’s rainfly. 

From a sunrise on Lake Erie to a sunset on Lake Superior, with stops at Lake Huron and Lake Michigan on the way, I saw every Great Lake bordering Michigan in one day.

If you live in Southeast Michigan, replicating this trip is easy. Sunrise on Lake Erie beach near Monroe, then up to New Presque Isle to see Lake Huron. Then on to Wilderness State Park for Lake Michigan. Finally, after crossing into the Upper Peninsula, the journey ends at Whitefish Point to see the sun set on Lake Superior. 

In car time alone, this trip takes about nine hours, assuming there’s no heavy traffic. With nearly 12 hours of daylight, we had plenty of time. 

7:35 a.m.: sunrise in Monroe.

As a child, you learn that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This of course is not entirely true. The sun’s placement changes in the sky based on the season, higher to the north in the summer and more southerly in the winter. 

I know this, but not well enough, apparently. Standing on the concrete retaining wall at a public park on the Lake Erie shore, I see first light concentrating over the narrow Stony Point peninsula. Rats! It feels like a portent of certain failure, but I decide it is not. As the waves slap the concrete wall and the sun burns oranger through the cloudless sky, I know it will be alright. 

Opposite the sun, just over three miles away, Monroe’s two coal-burning power plant towers loom, like colossal cigarettes planted into the ground, spewing their nonsense into the morning air. After sufficient admiration of the least of Michigan’s Great Lakes, we leave the neighborhood park at the edge of the infinite horizon and embark on the longest leg of the journey. 

Thick fog rivaling that of Maine’s seashore burns off as we continue north through Detroit’s suburbs up I-75.  

8 a.m.

After over three hours of driving, near Mio, I quickly consult my Dutch housemate Geert, and we decide it’s time for a diversion. The scenery has changed—fewer fields and houses, more forest and hills—so I decide to take a random turn onto a dirt road into the Huron National Forest. 

Barely off this road, I turn off again to the Au Sable River. 

The soft forest floor blanketed with needles of pines, which trees almost exclusively populate the space near the river, harbors a palpably different air from the Monroe shore. Some men tell us they just saw an eagle.

The river’s current pushes fast along the center under a mostly calm surface and glassy edges. Two fly-fishing boats float by in light conversation. 

Leaving the Au Sable, our souls feel refreshed for continuing to our next destination: Alpena.

11 a.m. 

This stop is simply a diversion, because I decided that Thunder Bay did not quite check the Lake Huron box. My reasons for stopping in Alpena then are twofold: food and cement. 

One of my housemates told us he had a friend who worked at the cement factory in Alpena, “which is the largest cement factory in the world!” he exclaimed. 

I, of course, did not believe him. Certainly the largest one would be in China. Turns out, William is probably right. The World Record Academy claims Holcim Group’s Alpena Factory has got it, though other sources disagree. Regardless, it is certainly the largest in the country. 

We enter the gates and see it: a mass of industrial towers next to a big white dome. But don’t have time to linger.

Ready for fresh food, we pull off at the first place that looked enticing: Nowicki’s Sausage Shoppe. They had a sign that says, “BRAT IN A BUN $3.99,” and have been open since 1917—two promising signs.

Though a humble shop, it is probably the juiciest Bratwurst I ever had; I would recommend it. 

Leaving Alpena in the rearview, we continue our northward journey to the Presque Isle Lighthouse.

1:00 p.m.

Presque Isle, which translates to “nearly an island,” can well be described as exactly that. Near the north point is the island’s new lighthouse, built in 1870. That does not sound terribly new, but “new” is relative to the old one, which was built in 1840 and on the extreme southern tip of the island.

For a small fee, we climb the corkscrew staircase to the top of the new lighthouse, which is the tallest public lighthouse on the Great Lakes (there are four taller than this one, but they are not open to the public). From the top, we see the pines of Presque Isle and the deep horizon of Lake Huron.

Mary Tagliaremi, the president of the Presque Isle Museum Society, says this stretch of lake is called, “Shipwreck Alley,” because of all the shipwrecks caused by fog, storms, and traffic along the coast.

“Two weekends ago, we ran a beach cleanup, and it was sunny when we got here, and an hour and a half later, it was just fog—dense fog,” she says. “You know, we laugh about it and say ‘that’s really cool,’ but can you imagine if you were traveling through the area on a steamship or a sailboat? They would hit shallow water. They would collide with each other. There were a fair number that just didn’t know the other ones were out.”

With shipwrecks on our mind, we go down to the rocky shore and complete our obligatory admiration of Lake Huron. It boasts a blue much deeper than Erie. 

Since our pass to the top of the new lighthouse allows us to also climb the old one, we quickly drive over there. At this point. we had made definite plans to meet another friend on the shores of Lake Michigan and are now on the clock.

Sailors complained about the old lighthouse because it is hardly visible from the water, nearly faces the land, and is shorter than the treetops. Though it makes a lovely residence by the lakeshore, it was not much good for its intended purpose.

2 p.m.

The climb to the top of the old lighthouse is light work, and we watch a cargo ship head in toward the harbor. Geert and I look out on the windy lake, and he assures me, based on the waves, that this wind is increasing. We check the weather. Sure enough, a gale is forming. 

We head northwest. Though we need to move fast, my desire for lighthouses is not quite quenched. Back at the new lighthouse, an older man mentioned that the 40-mile-point lighthouse has the huge wheel of a ship washed up on the beach by it. It’s just a quick pull off from our route up SR-23 along Huron’s shore, so we take it.

The shipwreck is, in one word, underwhelming—a few beams of wood impaled by tight lines of short poles of metal resembling iron rebar, all flat on the beach. The wrecked boat, called the “Fay,” grounded and broke apart carrying iron ore in October 1905. What we see is only part of the starboard side. I suppose 119 years of erosion really wears you down.

We speed back to the car and head to Lake Michigan’s Wilderness State Park. With all the diversions along Lake Huron, I know we will not give Lake Michigan the attention it deserves. And on top of that, we are running late to meet with our friend Andrew. 

We are nearing Cheboygan. 

3 p.m.

Andrew calls us, he has arrived. We still have 45 minutes until we hit the shore of Sturgeon Bay. Though I skipped Thunder Bay, because I wanted raw Lake Huron, we did not follow such a stipulation this time. However, I would consider Sturgeon Bay more Lake Michigan than Thunder Bay is Lake Huron, and both are better than just going to the Straits of Mackinac and calling it a day. 

We arrive and find Andrew standing in the lake, and we join him. To describe the water briefly: It’s cold. Far colder than Lake Huron. This is due to a process called upwelling. Essentially, the wind blows the warm surface water away from the land, allowing colder water from the deep to rise to the top. This process occurs more on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan because of wind direction. Long story short, I would recommend swimming in Lake Huron. That’s where all the interesting shipwrecks are anyway. 

The gale blows stronger down the straits. 

As a native Virginian and admirer of the Atlantic Ocean, something that always shocked me about the Great Lakes is the taste of the wind. On the ocean, the salt air blows relentlessly, changing the texture of your hair and bringing water to your eyes. On the Great Lakes, the air blows in a similar fashion, and the water stretches to the horizon just as it does on the ocean, but the air tastes like nothing. It can only be described as “fresh.”

I consider this while watching some madman on a jet ski battle waves, but we have to jet toward Lake Superior.

Lake Superior, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy, yet millions of people play on its shores each year. Approximately 550 ships have sunk off Whitefish Point, giving it the nickname, the “Graveyard of the Great Lakes.” The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, adorned with mangled ship parts and far from any major city, attracts around 100,000 visitors each season. 

Why should a Detroiter drive five hours each way just to be near Lake Superior? Why is this deadly lake so magnetic? Every Michigander knows why—it’s beautiful.

We cross the Mackinac Bridge, admiring the excellent craftsmanship of the double suspension, which holds up five miles of bridge bearing the weight of four million cars each year, and enter the Upper Peninsula.

4:30 p.m.

The U.P. is the land of extremes: The roads are straighter, wider, and emptier; the trees, if not greener with more pines, are far redder with the kiss of autumn; the towns are small and the parks grand.

Looking for dinner, we decide to make a stop in Paradise at the base of the Whitefish Point peninsula. If you were to ask me what’s in Paradise, I would tell you this: some of the finest Lake Superior Whitefish fish and chips you’d ever have. 

We pull up to a bright red food truck called, “Catch of the Day.” The woman takes our orders—cash only—and we wait. After two more people pull up, they’re out of fish, and customers must resort to corndogs (unacceptable for most).

I ask the woman taking orders where the fish come from. She says her father’s boat is called, “Eat Moore Fish,” because her last name is Moore. “My dad wakes up early and catches them himself. We’re basically here till we run out of fish each day.”

Filled up on fish, we drive the last leg north. Sunset is drawing near.

6 p.m.

Driving into the point’s parking lot, I learn that my friends are determined to swim. Geert assures me that Great Lakes residents are far too cautious about the waves and riptides of the lakes. As a seasoned swimmer, I’m sure he’ll be alright.

Walking to the beach, we see the fourth lighthouse of the day. It has a narrow central column and skeleton-like scaffolding around it to protect it from high winds. Built in 1849, it is meant to resemble the Old Presque Isle Light. Though the oldest lighthouse in the U.P., it looks as though it was never finished. Given hundreds of sunken ships, I doubt its effectiveness. 

The wind rips the sand down the beach and it stings my face, making it nearly impossible to look upwind with open eyes. Andrew and Geert run down the beach and dive into the cold and closely-packed breaking waves. The people walking by cheer them on, and they cheer back in triumph. Behind them, the rolling soft and blue Canadian mountains on the other side of the lake peek over the horizon.

After spending nearly 10 minutes in the water and moving around to the less windy western side of the point, they emerge and wrap up in towels.

The sky holds only the high wispy thin clouds that assure of a great and growing wind. We walk down the beach, heading southwest for a better sunset, but to no avail. It became clear as we kept walking: We would not see the sun drop into the lake, just as we did not see it come out of another lake. Purple and orange dash the sky, all merging into the concentrated explosion of the golden sun.

7:11 p.m.: sunset at Whitefish Point.

The mission is completed, but the journey is not over. We have to sleep somewhere and are determined to camp. 

As the night goes on, we hear rumors of a storm, but Geert is not convinced. Eventually, the occasional flash of lightning demands our attention. But “it won’t hit us,” we say. “The storm will stay on the lake.” The thunder grumbles in disagreement. 

I realize that my tent does not not have a rainfly. Geert saves our night’s sleep with his rain jacket. I am not convinced it will hold. As we put out the fire, the thunder and lightning are unmistakably louder. We clean up the site, and the lightning flashes. The zipper on the door of Andrew’s tent snags. Rain begins to drip. Geert gets it back into place. 

We get into our tents, and the storm no longer holds back—there is not a moment of darkness or silence from thunder and lightning alone. Then the rain comes. 

Though the storm rages, we somehow tune it out and find rest. The next morning was not dry, but the rain jacket held.

Colman Rowan is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.