Lake Michigan is a 22,400 square miles lake stretched between Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. It is the largest freshwater lake in the world within one country; Lake Michigan is 307 miles long and 118 miles wide, with 1,640 miles of shoreline. There are over 80 lighthouses around the lake and its large islands. Lake Michigan is also a home to 12 million people and the destination of thousands of visitors. Lake Michigan has some of the most beautiful beaches in the country and a number of popular parks that protect the lake’s diverse environment.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore takes about 35 miles of the lake’s eastern shoreline and offers forests, beaches, and spectacular dune formations. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore has 25 miles of the lake’s coastline, sand dunes, rivers, swamps, wetland forests, and much more. There are miles of hiking trails all around the lake as well as the 6,500-mile scenic Great Lakes Circle Tour. Lake Michigan has enough fish for both commercial and sport fishing, and it is rich in brown trout, chinook and coho salmon, lake trout, perch, largemouth bass, rainbow trout, steelhead, smallmouth bass, and walleye.

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