Top 6 Reasons A Lake is Better than the Ocean

As a California transplant suddenly finding herself quite literally in the middle of America, I have often credited the massive girth of Lake Michigan as one reason I don't feel insanely homesick for my homeland. I cannot see the end of this particular Great Lake (the greatest of all the lakes, I might add), for it's massive size makes the opposite shoreline impossible to view. This is great for me because it tricks my mind into believing I am not as land-locked as I actually am. It gives the illusion that I am on a coast of some kind, and that comforts me.

Over the years here in Chicago, I have grown to love and appreciate Lake Michigan's beach front for all it has to offer me. Its sandy beaches are my court when I play beach volleyball in the summer time. Its long and winding bike path is my main road to different city events going on downtown. Its murky waters provide relief on a hot and humid summer day. And sometimes, I will be honest, it is just a convenient place to pee. For all these reasons and more, I love Lake Michigan with all the gusto I have had for the Pacific Ocean all these years. As a replacement for my first body-of-water-love, it has done all right by me.

Without further ado, here is a list of reasons why a lake is better than the ocean:

6) No sharks!
I never have a Jaws moment while swimming in the lake. In the ocean, every now and then, I would suffer a small panic attack and picture a shark coming my way. I can't help it, I am a child of the 80's. Jaws was as real and American as apple pie to me.

5) The water is not salty.
Salt water starts to irritate my skin after a while of swimming in it. And boy does it burn if it gets in your nose.

4) No seaweed.
If I had a nickel for every time I accidentally stepped on one of those weird bubbly parts of seaweed and shrieked when it popped below my feet, well...I would not be all that rich but I still remember doing that a lot as a child running around the Pacific coast. Also I remember loads and loads of seaweed washing up on the shore in huge hairy clumps that looked like a giant lost his wig. These clumps would inevitably attract a strong following of sea flies, and would look like weird writhing hills all over the sand, until you walked up and the flies all made a group exodus right at your face. Sick.

3) The water actually gets warmer in the summer
I lived in Newport Beach, CA for a year. I swam in the ocean zero times in that year. Why? Because the Pacific never seems to get warmer in the summer. My body could not take freezing cold water tempature, and so I was only able to view the beautiful surf and maybe put a toe in, but certainly not swim in it. All those surfers in California? 9 times out of 10 they are wearing wet suits. For good reason. The idea of people just diving right into the ocean in Southern California in their bikinis or swim trunks is quite the urban myth. Deal with it. But the lake? I can jump right into those warm waters and splash around like the best of them. Bliss.

2) Tiny Waves
As someone who has been knocked down endlessly by wave after wave in the ocean, the mild little lapping of  waves on the lake is a welcome change. I am in the power position now, water! Take that!

1) No Tide!
The best thing about the lake verses the ocean is that there are no tide changes. When you go out to the lake shore, you know exactly what you are getting into. The water hits at more or less the same spot every day. But at the ocean, as the day progresses, your sweet little beach set up might have to get moved again and again as the waves start moving on up on you. Falling asleep close to the waves at the beach? Risky and annoying. Falling asleep near the waves on the lake shore? Safe and heavenly.

Add to these reasons the fact that Chicago has a sweet city skyline to view behind you as you lounge at the lake, and I think these are some very compelling things that make the lake way more awesome than the ocean.

Of course I could just be coming up with things to make me miss the ocean a little less. Either way, it works.