Best Lake Michigan Hikes: 10 Favorite Lake Michigan Hikes on the Beach

Ever since Loreen Niewenhuis hiked the perimeter of Lake Michigan in 2009 (and wrote her popular 2011 book, A 1,000-Mile Walk on the Beach), people have asked about her favorite stretches of the Lake Michigan lakeshore – especially options to hike that are a bit shorter than 1,000 miles long!

Now, Niewenhuis has assembled a list of her 10 favorite stretches of shoreline to walk. With a map and ideas for starting points for each, she selected great hikes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, including walks at Warren Dunes, Grand Mere State Park, Ludington State Park, and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan's lower peninsula, Fayette Historic State Park in the U.P., and Harrington Beach and Kohler-Andrae parks in Wisconsin, plus two urban walks on the lakeshore in Milwaukee and Chicago.

The hiking trails (mostly unmarked, as the paths generally follow the lake) range from very short up to long hikes of 15 miles or more. It's a brief ebook, only about 35 pages long, but offers inspirational ideas for outings that celebrate this wonderful and scenic natural resource.

Niewenhuis includes notes on local attractions, museums, and independent bookstores, with an appendix noting major organizations like the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, and Alliance for the Great Lakes that are working to preserve and protect Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes environment.

After her first 1,000-mile walk in 2009 around Lake Michigan, the author undertook a second 1,000-mile adventure, walking stretches of all five Great Lakes, culminating in her 2013 book, A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk. In 2015, she published the story of her third Great Lakes adventure, A 1,000-mile Great Lakes Island Adventure.

Niewenhuis lives in Traverse City, Michigan, and does many talks around the Great Lakes region for book clubs, public libraries, and environmental groups. For more on her presentations, visit her website at www.LakeTrek.com.