August 4, 2026 

I usually post these ramblings the first Monday of the month, but it didn’t get done yesterday. Why? Because it was a great day for boating on the “Big Lake,” and such days don’t come around that often where I live. When one comes along that is warm but not too hot, with only a gentle breeze and maybe a few old rolling waves, we must drop all other plans for the day and head to the closest public boat ramp.

Now, what do I mean by the “Big Lake?” That is a term Yoopers use to describe Lake Superior. Maybe it’s just a Keweenaw term, but even growing up, The Big Lake meant Lake Superior, as opposed to Portage Lake, Torch Lake, Rice Lake, Lake Medora, Lac La Belle, Gratiot Lake, Lake Fanny Hoe … all of which along with many more are in the Keweenaw Peninsula and countless others across the Upper Peninsula. Huge, Enormous, Inland Salt-Free Ocean, and other terms also apply, but Big Lake stuck somewhere back in time.

We took a family of three—parents and one young son—with us in our 17.5-foot open boat mainly intended for fishing. Although we didn’t fish much. We took these visitors, relatives of a neighbor, out for a picnic on the lake, the Big Lake. They had a ball, especially the young boy who had never been on any kind of boat. Up the east coast of the Keweenaw Peninsula from Grand Traverse Bay to Lac La Belle, flying along at top speed, pointing out landmarks along the way: the Gay Stack, Huron Mountains to the east in the distance, the mountains of Cliff Drive to the west, Mount Bohemia, etc. After eating our picnic lunch on Beta Gris Bay, we decided go through the channel into Lac La Belle for it’s restroom facilities, with the plan to go on up the coast to view Montreal Falls, when the motor decided to act up, not getting even close to full speed. So, skip the falls, head back to where we started, at less than half speed—the thirty minutes coming turned into two hours to return. But we got back safely and everybody had fun anyway. The motor problem has been diagnosed and an easy fix.

Anyway, back to “The Big Lake.” This morning, my husband said, “You know, you are right about saying Big Lake for Lake Superior. I used that without thinking when I asked them if they wanted to come with us.” He’d gotten a strange look from these visiting tourists and stated, “Lake Superior” after that. We laughed. After all, here in the Keweenaw Peninsula, the “mouth” of the Lake Superior wolf head, we have all these “inland” lakes, more than those already named, and are on this skinny finger into it, barely 30 miles wide and over 50 miles long, with all these places of water surrounded by the hugeness of Lake Superior, the BIG Lake. It’s a good thing we went yesterday because today thunder is rolling and there are small craft warnings up—winds 15-30 miles per hour. That’s not a lake to be on in a 17.5-foot open boat.