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The Great Lakes at Ten Miles an Hour: One Cyclist's Journey along the Shores of the Inland Seas
The Great Lakes are a remarkable repository of millions of years of complex geological transformations and of a considerably shorter, crowded span of human history. Over the course of four summers, Thomas Shevory rode a bicycle along their shores, taking in the stories the lakes tell—of nature’s grandeur and decay, of economic might and squandered promise, of exploration, colonization, migration, and military adventure. This book is Shevory’s account of his travels, shored up by his exploration of the geological, environmental, historical, and cultural riches harbored by North America’s great inland seas. For Shevory, and his readers, his ride is an enlightening, unfailingly engaging course in the Great Lakes’ place in geological time and the nation’s history. Along the northern shore of Lake Huron, one encounters the scrubbed surfaces of the Canadian Shield, the oldest exposed rock in North America. Growing out of the crags of the Niagara Escarpment, which stretches from the western reaches of Lake Michigan to the spectacular waterfalls between Erie and Ontario, are the white cedars that are among the oldest trees east of the Mississippi. The lakes offer reminders of the fur trade that drew voyageurs to the interior, the disruption of Native American cultures, major battles of the War of 1812, the shipping and logging industries that built the Midwest, the natural splendors preserved and exploited, and the urban communities buoyed or buried by economic changes over time. Throughout The Great Lakes at Ten Miles an Hour , Shevory describes the engaging characters he encounters along the way and the surprising range of country and city landscapes, bustling and serene locales that he experiences, making us true companions on his ride.
248 pages, Paperback
Published October 24, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 20, 2018
This was an enjoyable and very quick reading book that could be read as a good travelogue of the lands surrounding each of the Great Lakes, a skillful combination of wonderful asides on the region’s human and natural history interspersed with personal experiences with the people, food, places, terrain, weather, and in some cases wildlife. It can also be read as a cycling book, a genre of books I had never read an example of before (and one in which the author educated me on, providing a list of some very interesting titles I may look up later), this book showing the particular trials and tribulations of cycling around each of the Great Lakes whether the challenges came from types of roads, presence or lack thereof of suitable bike paths, from traffic, from getting lost, weather, finding a suitable campsite or in urban areas, a motel or hotel, or the many possible equipment failures that can occur from cycling such long distances.
The book is really straightforward, the author talking about the history of books on cycling, how hard it is to be original (the author mentioning one website listed the 62 best books on cycling), that there were books on 12 and 13 year old people cycling across America (delightfully titled _Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America?_ by John Seigel Boettner) and cycling diagonally across the country from Washington state to Florida (_Just Keep Pedaling: A Corner-to-Corner Bike Ride Across America_ by T.E. Trimbath), and what the author decided upon, which was to circle each of the Great Lakes in turn, one at a time, over the space of several years.
After listing some of the other books he read in preparation (several of which I have read and can recommend, such as _The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region_ and the excellent _The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas_ by Jerry Dennis), the author dives right into the purpose of the book – describing his journeys – which each section after opening with a stylized map, describing day by day his journey around each lake (beginning with Lake Huron in July of 2011 and his final journey Lake Ontario in June of 2014, this lake the closest to his home), the book closing with an epilogue and a summation of some of his thoughts and hopes for the future (and then closing with some very thorough end notes and through them a list of excellent books to read next).
The opening lake covered was Lake Huron in 2011. Beginning in Sarnia, Ontario (La Salle called the place “The Rapids” owing to its place on the St. Clair River though its 23 nearby chemical plants have given the place the nickname “chemical alley”), Shevory described his journey around Huron (less populated along its shores and thus less polluted – despite Sarnia – than Lakes Michigan, Erie, or Ontario), along the way with brief asides on the history of the timber industry in Michigan, a huge fire that ravaged Michigan’s thumb in 1881, terrain the result of glaciers in the thumb region, a bit about the Race Across America (or RAAM, briefly discussed in an aside), musings on the hostility people show to cyclists, a bit about the _Edmund Fitzgerald_ and also the “white hurricane” of November 1913, the Sault Ste. Marie locks, and the brief story of a man he met cycling the lake, a man who rescued stray cats (nine of them) and had read them the works of William Faulkner and Dostoyevsky.
Lake Erie was the next lake he cycled, doing so in 2012. A very interesting chapter, among the many asides and topics covered that caught my attention was information on the Portage Trail (first traveled by a Europeans in 1615, it is a ten mile stretch of overland trail linking Lakes Erie and Chautauqua), the area around Barcelona (known as the “grape juice capital of the world,” its Concord grapes used by Welch’s for their grape juice products), Thomas Bramwell Welch (the man who perfected the pasteurization of grape juice, strongly against slavery and alcohol), the Battle of Lake Erie (a key part of the War of 1812 and a battle in which Commander Oliver Hazard Perry became a national hero), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “Downriver” (“a series of working-class communities that lead toward Detroit’s city limits”), quite a bit about the desolate urban landscape of parts of Detroit, the bubble of “wide lawns, large trees, and virtually no traffic” that is Sherwood Forest neighborhood, home to two Frank Lloyd Wright homes yet “surrounded on all sides by Detroit’s deterioration,” Windsor, Canada (“shockingly clean and neat compared to Detroit”), Point Pelee National Park (important national park in Canada, particularly because of it is a stopover point for migratory birds and its southern reach and being surrounded on three sides by Lake Erie moderate its climate, allowing more southerly forest types to grow), closing with comparing the differences between the northern and southern shores; “Southern Lake Erie is one (often distressed) metropolitan area after another, but the northern side is mostly farms, orchards, and sparsely developed shoreline.”
Lake Michigan, also cycled in 2012, was next. The largest lake contained within the borders of a single country, it was covered in a chapter with many interesting asides and topics, including Sheboygan and its history of German immigrants and culture, the Hmong community of Sheboygan, the piece of the Soviet Sputnik IV that landed on one of the main streets of Manitowoc in 1963 (celebrated every year since 2011 by Sputnikfest and crowning Miss Space Debris), Green Bay (the largest freshwater estuary in the world), Hiawatha (a name celebrated in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, though the real Hiawatha lived in upstate New York and Longfellow was really writing about “the legendary Ojibwe trickster Manabozho”), the geology of the Au Train-Whitefish Channel and the Whitefish Fan, Muskegon, Michigan (the largest city on Michigan’s eastern shore, pretty much “divides southern urban and agricultural areas in Michigan from “up north”), and the racial and economic differences between Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, located just across the St. Joseph River.
Lake Superior, cycled in July 2013, was the next trip discussed in the book’s chronological coverage of the author’s trips. In this section the non-strictly-cycling-parts include pasties (singular pasty, “semicircular pastry filled with various combinations of meat, onions, fish, potatoes, turnips, or rutabagas,” originating in Cornwall, England, brought over by tin and copper miners to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, now a major part of that region’s food culture), run ins with ticks on several occasions, Calumet (and its history of coppery mining, coverage of the Calumet Mining Company, and the terrible Christmas 1913 disaster in which a number of people died, including 62 children), kinkkukiusaus (a Finnish dish of “ham, potatoes, whole cream, and cheddar cheese”), the impressive urban art murals of Ashland (fifteen painted since 1998), the history and geology of Duluth (home to an ancient lava flow known as the Duluth Complex), Thunder Bay (which the author admits “sounds like a romantic place…evokes images of Lake Superior waves crashing against ancient igneous rock flows” but wrote that the reality is a lot less poetic), and Wawa (a tiny town, bypassed by the Trans-Canada Highway, marked by a much photographed but now deteriorating large Canada goose statue).
The final trip was Lake Ontario in June of 2014. It felt the shortest and least exotic of the lakes covered in the book but was still interesting. The reader gets some of the positive and negative history of George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company (something that really defined Rochester for decades), the Lewiston area (home to a 700 acre hazardous waste dump, the only active one in the northeastern U.S. and contains, among other things “a desk once used by NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, placed there after it was contaminated with anthrax”), riding through a blackout (the author writing about seeing Toronto blacked out, a “major North American city without electricity, fading in the darkness” as a “scene I have never forgotten”), the history and culture of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (sort of created as a French version of St. Patrick’s Day, at least in Canada), and Webster (a suburb of Rochester, renamed to honor Daniel Webster after an apparently particularly impressive speech to members of the Whig Party in 1837).
The final chapter was an epilogue and a number of musings by the author.
Interspersed throughout the text were the many problems the author had in cycling, from flat tires to slow leaks to parts malfunctioning to not having adequate shoulders to ride on to cycling through areas that technically banned bicycles.
Not really too many complaints. I would have liked photographs and the author mentioned taking photos on several occasions. Some of the asides were extremely brief, while interesting, were essentially just a paragraph. Other asides, again interesting, seemed more the result of researching the area and condensing facts and anecdotes from his reading rather than something the author experienced directly, but I didn’t have a real problem with this as it was a good general introduction to many aspects of Great Lakes natural history, geography, human history, and culture and there were things he couldn’t obviously experience directly (such as historical events). A few things, be it the Ashland murals or kinkkukiusaus or “Downriver” I would have liked described in greater detail and with generally more descriptive text. Nothing bad, I just wanted a bit more.
The book is really straightforward, the author talking about the history of books on cycling, how hard it is to be original (the author mentioning one website listed the 62 best books on cycling), that there were books on 12 and 13 year old people cycling across America (delightfully titled _Hey Mom, Can I Ride My Bike Across America?_ by John Seigel Boettner) and cycling diagonally across the country from Washington state to Florida (_Just Keep Pedaling: A Corner-to-Corner Bike Ride Across America_ by T.E. Trimbath), and what the author decided upon, which was to circle each of the Great Lakes in turn, one at a time, over the space of several years.
After listing some of the other books he read in preparation (several of which I have read and can recommend, such as _The Great Lakes: The Natural History of a Changing Region_ and the excellent _The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas_ by Jerry Dennis), the author dives right into the purpose of the book – describing his journeys – which each section after opening with a stylized map, describing day by day his journey around each lake (beginning with Lake Huron in July of 2011 and his final journey Lake Ontario in June of 2014, this lake the closest to his home), the book closing with an epilogue and a summation of some of his thoughts and hopes for the future (and then closing with some very thorough end notes and through them a list of excellent books to read next).
The opening lake covered was Lake Huron in 2011. Beginning in Sarnia, Ontario (La Salle called the place “The Rapids” owing to its place on the St. Clair River though its 23 nearby chemical plants have given the place the nickname “chemical alley”), Shevory described his journey around Huron (less populated along its shores and thus less polluted – despite Sarnia – than Lakes Michigan, Erie, or Ontario), along the way with brief asides on the history of the timber industry in Michigan, a huge fire that ravaged Michigan’s thumb in 1881, terrain the result of glaciers in the thumb region, a bit about the Race Across America (or RAAM, briefly discussed in an aside), musings on the hostility people show to cyclists, a bit about the _Edmund Fitzgerald_ and also the “white hurricane” of November 1913, the Sault Ste. Marie locks, and the brief story of a man he met cycling the lake, a man who rescued stray cats (nine of them) and had read them the works of William Faulkner and Dostoyevsky.
Lake Erie was the next lake he cycled, doing so in 2012. A very interesting chapter, among the many asides and topics covered that caught my attention was information on the Portage Trail (first traveled by a Europeans in 1615, it is a ten mile stretch of overland trail linking Lakes Erie and Chautauqua), the area around Barcelona (known as the “grape juice capital of the world,” its Concord grapes used by Welch’s for their grape juice products), Thomas Bramwell Welch (the man who perfected the pasteurization of grape juice, strongly against slavery and alcohol), the Battle of Lake Erie (a key part of the War of 1812 and a battle in which Commander Oliver Hazard Perry became a national hero), the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “Downriver” (“a series of working-class communities that lead toward Detroit’s city limits”), quite a bit about the desolate urban landscape of parts of Detroit, the bubble of “wide lawns, large trees, and virtually no traffic” that is Sherwood Forest neighborhood, home to two Frank Lloyd Wright homes yet “surrounded on all sides by Detroit’s deterioration,” Windsor, Canada (“shockingly clean and neat compared to Detroit”), Point Pelee National Park (important national park in Canada, particularly because of it is a stopover point for migratory birds and its southern reach and being surrounded on three sides by Lake Erie moderate its climate, allowing more southerly forest types to grow), closing with comparing the differences between the northern and southern shores; “Southern Lake Erie is one (often distressed) metropolitan area after another, but the northern side is mostly farms, orchards, and sparsely developed shoreline.”
Lake Michigan, also cycled in 2012, was next. The largest lake contained within the borders of a single country, it was covered in a chapter with many interesting asides and topics, including Sheboygan and its history of German immigrants and culture, the Hmong community of Sheboygan, the piece of the Soviet Sputnik IV that landed on one of the main streets of Manitowoc in 1963 (celebrated every year since 2011 by Sputnikfest and crowning Miss Space Debris), Green Bay (the largest freshwater estuary in the world), Hiawatha (a name celebrated in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, though the real Hiawatha lived in upstate New York and Longfellow was really writing about “the legendary Ojibwe trickster Manabozho”), the geology of the Au Train-Whitefish Channel and the Whitefish Fan, Muskegon, Michigan (the largest city on Michigan’s eastern shore, pretty much “divides southern urban and agricultural areas in Michigan from “up north”), and the racial and economic differences between Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, located just across the St. Joseph River.
Lake Superior, cycled in July 2013, was the next trip discussed in the book’s chronological coverage of the author’s trips. In this section the non-strictly-cycling-parts include pasties (singular pasty, “semicircular pastry filled with various combinations of meat, onions, fish, potatoes, turnips, or rutabagas,” originating in Cornwall, England, brought over by tin and copper miners to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, now a major part of that region’s food culture), run ins with ticks on several occasions, Calumet (and its history of coppery mining, coverage of the Calumet Mining Company, and the terrible Christmas 1913 disaster in which a number of people died, including 62 children), kinkkukiusaus (a Finnish dish of “ham, potatoes, whole cream, and cheddar cheese”), the impressive urban art murals of Ashland (fifteen painted since 1998), the history and geology of Duluth (home to an ancient lava flow known as the Duluth Complex), Thunder Bay (which the author admits “sounds like a romantic place…evokes images of Lake Superior waves crashing against ancient igneous rock flows” but wrote that the reality is a lot less poetic), and Wawa (a tiny town, bypassed by the Trans-Canada Highway, marked by a much photographed but now deteriorating large Canada goose statue).
The final trip was Lake Ontario in June of 2014. It felt the shortest and least exotic of the lakes covered in the book but was still interesting. The reader gets some of the positive and negative history of George Eastman and the Eastman Kodak Company (something that really defined Rochester for decades), the Lewiston area (home to a 700 acre hazardous waste dump, the only active one in the northeastern U.S. and contains, among other things “a desk once used by NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw, placed there after it was contaminated with anthrax”), riding through a blackout (the author writing about seeing Toronto blacked out, a “major North American city without electricity, fading in the darkness” as a “scene I have never forgotten”), the history and culture of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (sort of created as a French version of St. Patrick’s Day, at least in Canada), and Webster (a suburb of Rochester, renamed to honor Daniel Webster after an apparently particularly impressive speech to members of the Whig Party in 1837).
The final chapter was an epilogue and a number of musings by the author.
Interspersed throughout the text were the many problems the author had in cycling, from flat tires to slow leaks to parts malfunctioning to not having adequate shoulders to ride on to cycling through areas that technically banned bicycles.
Not really too many complaints. I would have liked photographs and the author mentioned taking photos on several occasions. Some of the asides were extremely brief, while interesting, were essentially just a paragraph. Other asides, again interesting, seemed more the result of researching the area and condensing facts and anecdotes from his reading rather than something the author experienced directly, but I didn’t have a real problem with this as it was a good general introduction to many aspects of Great Lakes natural history, geography, human history, and culture and there were things he couldn’t obviously experience directly (such as historical events). A few things, be it the Ashland murals or kinkkukiusaus or “Downriver” I would have liked described in greater detail and with generally more descriptive text. Nothing bad, I just wanted a bit more.
June 3, 2019
2019 bk 187. I live south of the Great Lakes and have only seen Michigan, Eerie, and maybe Superior as a child. I'm usually more of a river person myself, but I saw this book and as I've been contemplating a cruise on the Great Lakes thought I would give it a try. Thomas Shevory is a political science professor and it shows. He has done research into the geology of the Great Lakes region and shares it, but he also shares information on the economy and pollution that has occurred in the region. That said, he also is also able to give the reader a sense of the small towns / large cities / and many parks along the shores of the lakes. He did not 'do' the Great Lakes in one long trip, rather taking each lake on its own during the years 2011, 2012, and 2013. There are a few political campaign comments, but by and large the focus is on the Great Lakes Region. I wish there had been more interactions with people in the region, but he does a great job of describing his route and the condition of the roads and bike paths around each of the lakes. Worth a read if you have any interest in the area. His notes page includes lists of other bike journeys that I would like to read.
December 2, 2020
Bikes and the Great Lakes are among my favorite things, so I was excited to read this book. It was fun to revisit familiar places and learn more about the north shore of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. One of the four stars is for the author's great appreciation for Lake Superior, otherwise I would give the book three stars. Reports of interactions with locals or other bikers were too brief; but lots of information on geology and history, which can be found in textbooks without leaving home. I could do without the author's political opinions, even as I share some of them. They were a distraction. Also, I was flabbergasted by his comment about the Green Bay Packers, as he wonders why the NFL chose Green Bay for a franchise? After leaving Green Bay, he stopped at a diner in Oconto, where folks were apparently watching the Milwaukee Braves on TV. Maybe if he had talked with some locals, they could have set him straight.
January 10, 2025
What is it: T.S. cycles around each one of the great lakes and recounts his journeys along with background details of the places he drives through.
What I liked: I recognized many of the areas he bikes through from places I have lived, worked, or vacationed.
What I didn't like: The description is sparse, but the inclusion of mundane details is plentiful. Lots of what he ate and who he asked for directions, but no reports of how he felt or how things looked as he viewed them - just "it was a beautiful view of the lake." Also needed an editor for typos and fact checking... (I highly doubt he was in a room with a group of people watching a Milwaukee Braves game, since the Braves moved to Atlanta in the 60s and the Brewers have been Milwaukee's baseball team since 1970.)
The takeaway: If you really love cycling or the Great Lakes, be my guest. But not much here otherwise.
What I liked: I recognized many of the areas he bikes through from places I have lived, worked, or vacationed.
What I didn't like: The description is sparse, but the inclusion of mundane details is plentiful. Lots of what he ate and who he asked for directions, but no reports of how he felt or how things looked as he viewed them - just "it was a beautiful view of the lake." Also needed an editor for typos and fact checking... (I highly doubt he was in a room with a group of people watching a Milwaukee Braves game, since the Braves moved to Atlanta in the 60s and the Brewers have been Milwaukee's baseball team since 1970.)
The takeaway: If you really love cycling or the Great Lakes, be my guest. But not much here otherwise.
November 5, 2018
I actually really liked this book. It was exactly what I wanted it to be - driven by the place, not a plot, part description, part travelogue, part history. I enjoyed reading about the routes the author took around each of the great lakes and dream of someday being able to accomplish something so great. My only complaint about the book (and it's a kind of big one), is that the maps of each lake were very insufficient. Of course, I used Google to show me where these places were, but it took away from the experience a bit. I would have liked to have had a more detailed map of each area at the beginning of each chapter.
January 10, 2019
Books about bike touring or hiking through the country have always been interesting reads for me and this was no exception. Being as how it encompassed familiar territory, I was extra interested in checking out this book. The author's writing style is easy and the historical details not too in-depth, which is perfect. As books go, it was interesting but gave it 3 stars because of the lack of photos. It makes the book more interesting if you can see where the author has been and what they have experienced. The book was good, not great but worth the time to read.
August 20, 2019
After reading some other bicycle touring books, Thomas Shevory decided to check out an area closer to home. He chose the Great Lakes and decided to tour one lake each year. His book consists of journal entries about the current day's journey, covering scenery, road conditions, weather, and the people he encounters. He gives information on different area's geological formation, history of industrialization, the Native Americans who first inhabited the different areas and the Europeans who showed up first. A little more detail in certain areas would have been nice.
September 19, 2018
Thomas Shevory biked around each of the Great Lakes over four summers from 2011 through 2014. He chronicles each biking day and adds information about the cities he bikes through, their social state, the geology of each lake and its surroundings, and his daily impressions. At times, the extra material seemed like filler, but in general, the book gave me a flavor for each of the Lakes, the landscape that surrounded them, and what it is like to bike that many miles.
June 19, 2025
Pretty excellent! Pretty inspiring! Impressed by this author‘s writing, and the history infused in his story. I was appalled by one city’s misspelling. I am erring on the side of a typographical error. But three times?! And there were a handful of typos. Once I noticed the first one, my OCD kicks in! But it was a pretty fun book to read and follow along on the map of the perimeters of each great lake.
February 27, 2021
This was an enjoyable book on multiple levels. Concise and informative with a bit of (referenced) geography, history, environmental and indigenous perspectives tossed in with the travel/biking details. 4.5 🌟
March 8, 2021
Not as much geology and exploration of the lakes as the back cover led me to believe. A little dry at times, I thought some of the diary entries could have been trimmed down.
July 10, 2024
I enjoyed this memoir of one man’s bike ride around the Great Lakes. Recommended.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews