Elk Lake, Lake Skegemog, And Torch Lake

                     Tuesday 9/10/2013

On our 3rd day in Traverse City area, we drove east to Elk Lake. Joe points out on the map, Elk Lake.

Joe had seen a commercial of a really clear and beautiful lake and wanted to know the name of the lake. He googled the product's commercial, and found out the commercial was filmed on Elk Lake. Because we were going to be in the area, we wanted to see it. Elk Lake is 9 miles long and 1 1/2 miles wide, with a maximum depth of 192 feet, making it the second deepest lake in Michigan. This deep, clear, Caribbean-colored lake is very much a smaller version of the more famous Torch Lake, which lies just to the east.

We had pulled in at the boat launch at the Whitewater Township Park. There is a campground in this park with electricity at $27 a night. The campground has a dump site on location. It looked like a nice park, but I doubt if you can get a satellite signal there. (which is a big deal for us)

We drove south on the west side of Elk Lake, and connected into Hwy. 72 going east, then north on Baggs Road. Along Baggs Road, we saw these smiles. Someone has a good sense of humor!

The barns do cause you to smile back.

 

We found the boat access at Lake Skegemog, which is connected to Elk Lake.

As we walked up to the dock a man had lunched his boat by himself. Unfortunately the rope that he had tied to the trailer pulled away, and his boat went out beyond the dock. I had thought at first the maneuver was smart. I said to the guy, I guess you are going for a swim. He said it wasn't the first time he had to play rodeo. Lake Skegemog is 3 1/2 miles long and 1.3 miles wide, and 2,561 acres and maximum depth of 29 feet.

We left Lake Skegemog and traveled around the south end of the lake and then up the east side of the lake to Torch Lake.

Torch Lake is probably the pretties lake I have ever seen, excluding Lake Tahoe or Crater Lake of course.

Out in the distance we spotted the party sandbar that the guy that we met back at Lake Skegemog had told us about.

He told us on the weekends there are more than 200 boats on the sand bar. The sand bar was mentioned in Kid Rock's song, "All Summer Long".

On the southwest shore we found this lakefront house for sale. After I got home, I looked up the information on this house. It is 1,419 sq foot home with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms for $425,000 on a .3 acres lot. All the other homes we found on the lake where much higher.

We found this lake access park as we traveled north, and stopped for lunch. Just can't find much of a better view than this.

Up the road, I saw this house that I thought was very cute.

The outside walls were covered with river/lake rock. It was really neat looking!

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Much farther north on the west shore we found another lake access to the lake.

Here again you can see the line of demarcation where the water has a drop off. Torch Lake is 19 miles long and 2 miles wide, and 18,770 acres. It has a maximum depth of 285 feet deep and an average depth of  111 to 256 feet. Torch Lake is the longest and deepest inland lake in Michigan. It is also the second largest lake in Michigan.