A few years ago, some friends of mine and I decided that we would try to jump in all 5 Great Lakes in one day. We are prone to doing silly roadtrips like this, and jumping in all 5 Great Lakes in one day seemed to fit the bill!
[EFOHC: 88 counties of Ohio in under 24 hours]
[EFNEC: Time Lapse video of visiting all 67 counties in the 6 New England states in 27 hours]
We currently hold the world record for this “feat”, with a time of 8 hours, 51 minutes and 44 seconds. If you want to try and get a piece of our “fame” and “glory”, the ground rules are:
Here’s the video that we took of the trip. For your viewing pleasure, I cut out all of the time in the car and just edited it down to the actual times we were at the individual Great Lakes. The video is set to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“, which was the theme song for the trip.
If you don’t know the story of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes when it was built, and it sunk in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.
I hope you enjoy the video – feel free to leave descriptions of your own silly roadtrips in the comments!
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Hi dan
Love the site and will visit for other trips
We just finished the 5 in 24 hours challenge. We started in
St Catherine’s and finished in the Soo. 13 hours so your record us safe.
How did you possibly do it in under 9 hrs?
Tim hicks
Sorry Tim – that’s a closely guarded family secret 😉
Hi again Dan-
Realized, when coming home, that my earlier could be read with an edge (“how could you possibly…?”) that was not intended.
I just meant good for you guys. We three old guys were a bit lazy at eating and changing, but the best we could possibly do, we figured, would be about 11.5 hours or something. We started in St Catherines, went through Mich and figured we did 576 miles or something.
You guys were better navigators!
catheters and diapers 🙂
Wait – I thought that was what your time in the lake was for?!?! 😛
“jumping, running, or swimming from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron or vice versa is prohibited”
Didn’t you guys run from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan under the bridge?
No – we went into Lake Huron, then got out, back to the shore, and ran on the shore under the bridge before going into Lake Michigan. IMPORTANT DISTINCTION 😀
Isn’t the area around the bridge considered the straits not technically any lake? Where do you draw the line between Lakes?
IMO the Straits of Mackinac are a subset of Lakes Huron and Michigan
Hardest part of the trip: Getting in ice-cold Lake Ontario at 6 in the morning. Also most of the places we went to dive had rock beaches.
Since nothing prohibits you from flying this should be doable in under 6 hours.
I dunno – flying doesn’t seem like it would be any faster since convenient airports are not particularly close. Unless you’re planning on seaplaning and just landing in the lake somewhere?
You do Lakes Michigan and Huron by the Mackinaw Bridge, the drive to Sault Ste. Marie airport and do Superior, fly to Toronto and do Ontario then drive down to Erie. If you pick a slow travel day, I think 6 hours is doable.
Hmm that’s an interesting thought. Looks like 1:45 in driving time from Mackinac to YAM (Sault Ste Marie). The flight from YAM-YTZ is 1:19 but probably another 30-45 minutes (at least) to drop off the rental car, do security, etc even though YAM is super small. Another 3 hours from YTZ to Lake Erie. Add 30 minutes to get a car at YTZ and call it 30 minutes of total time to do all the lake plunges. I think you might be able to break the record but I think you’d be about 8 hours. If you think you can do it in 6 I’d love to hear about it 🙂
Key is the time you’d spend from arriving in Toronto to picking up a car and making your way to Lake Erie. You might be able to jump in right next to Billy Bishop. I might hold off on breaking the record, not a priority right now 😉