Great Lakes road trip?

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Thinking about doing a road trip to hit some Great Lakes dive sites this season. It seems to me that the dive culture in Great Lakes area (all five of them) is very weekend centric. Not much action during the weekdays. If I come to any of the Great Lakes to dive it would be a long drive for me (I will be driving with double tanks and deco bottles etc) and would like to get a few more consecutive days in. Is there any particular dive operator / area where I could get five diving days? If not five boat days then 2 boat diving days followed by 3 days of shore dives etc?

I would love to hear everyone's suggestions on how to get the most bang from the buck on this one.

Cheers -

CS

 

[Chris H]

If you can do 150'-200', Presque Isle, MI area of Lake Huron is awesome. If you were to get bored there, Mackinac City has some nice wrecks that are shallower and within a couple hours of drive time. Any of these places will require you bring trimix with you, or arrange to have fills done with some of the operators. I know Shipwreck Adventures offers on-site fills.

 

[Marie13]

Thunder Bay/Alpena, MI has some awesome wrecks. About 2 hours south of the Straits. You can get fills at Thunder Bay Scuba. This is Lake Huron.

 

[Marie13]

DRIS has a new boat on Lake Huron out of Port Sanilac and Harbor Beach. There are deeper wrecks out of Harbor Beach. You can get fills in Port Austin (Michigan Diver has a new fill station going in there).

 

[Lorenzoid]

We drove from Atlanta to Tobermory, ON last summer with all our gear. We loved it. The dive ops there go out pretty much every day in the summer. We did four dive days with a day in the middle to hike and explore. Oh Canada.

 

[rhwestfall]

Very limited on the Eastern end of Erie (Mike & Brandy w/ Ospreydive.com - weekends) and on Ontario (don't know who does this there). Perhaps in the St. Lawrence on charters (names elude me right now).....

Tobermory in an option for diving all week, but would likely be recreational profiles unless you can hook up with a smaller operator (Corry w/ C-View - has a Facebook page).

Also check with Greg Hillard as to where he might be going (FullyTec - has a Facebook page) in some of the bigger dives...

Logistics might be challenging if you are a single diver....

 

[2airishuman]

There are some operators that run liveaboards to Isle Royal. You may find that you have to charter the whole boat, but they may be able to put you in touch with groups looking for more divers.

http://isleroyalecharters.com/diving/ - I believe they operate to sites within recreational limits.

I can give you names of people/shops who have dived the deeper Lake Superior wrecks who may be able to help set up tech charters/liveaboards if you are interested. Again typically you have to be part of a group that charters the whole boat. Costs would be higher than warm water dives. I have heard the wrecks are in fantastic condition and have seen some amazing video.

The most common shore dives on Lake Superior are the Hesper and Madiera. I have been on both of these. They are within around 20 miles of each other and while they could theoretically be done the same day it is more realistic to plan them as two days of dives. There are "improved" shore accesses for these but they are still athletic. The Ely is near shore but you pretty much need a boat to get to it.

 

[Marie13]

For Chicago area wrecks, the Thomas Hume is at 145ft to the sand. There are some other wrecks in the Chicago-Milwaukee area.

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

For Chicago area wrecks, the Thomas Hume is at 145ft to the sand. There are some other wrecks in the Chicago-Milwaukee area.

Which dive operator runs charter to that wreck? It looks to be an amazing dive.

 

[Marie13]

Which dive operator runs charter to that wreck? It looks to be an amazing dive.

DRIS.

Out of Hammond, IN.