Lake Michigan

Introduction

The Lake Michigan shoreline provides many rewarding and refreshing paddling opportunities. When the lake is flat (<2 ft waves) paddlers can cover many miles seeing some unique freshwater dunes as well as visit small harbor towns. When the waves are higher it is harder to paddle lots of miles, but playing in the waves and improving rough water paddling skills can be very exciting and rewarding. The lake shore map below covers about 150 miles and has over 56 access sites. Many of these sites came from Brian Hutchins book titled "Michigan's West Coast Exploring the Shore Guide". This book provides information on potential access site along the entire west side of Michigan. In addition to the lake shore sites, there are maps below for several rivers that empty into Lake Michigan and are not part of the main 3 watersheds.  

Additional Information

The National Parks Service's Lake Michigan Water Trail covers the southern end of the lake and is planned to circle the lake in the coming years. For more information goto: http://www.lmwt.org/index.html. 

Maps

Select the maps in the Lake Michigan drop-down menu to view.