I’m not quite sure that most of the nation realizes how great the beaches are along the Great Lakes coast.  Thousands of miles of sand beach offer a sun and fun for millions of midwesterners.  Of course, these freshwater beaches are different in character than those found along the salty ocean shores.  A writer at the New  York Times published a comparison between these distant cousins of the water-meets-land world:

My 50 years have been equally divided between lake and ocean. Like anyone who grew up near a body of water bigger than a wading pool, I came early to the idea that beaches shape the summer. But precisely how beaches define those languid days depends upon the particular stretch of sand or rocky shore that is most familiar.

I grew up spending my summers at a family cottage on the vast freshwater sea of Lake Ontario, and for the first half of my life imagined that there could be little difference, save salinity, between it and the Atlantic. Ontario’s waters are so deep I have witnessed storm-driven waves become towers. The lake is so wide that little was visible on the horizon but the very tallest buildings of downtown Toronto — and those were distant blocks on land 35 miles away. Surely, I used to think, this lake was a match for any ocean.

But then I moved to coastal New England, and the moment I first walked on the windswept ocean beach, I discovered how mistaken my assumptions had been.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/travel/escapes/15rituals.html?ref=escapes

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