Kayaking Long Lake

An easy put-in is the Long Lake Trailhead parking area of the Lake County Forest Preserve District which provides access for paddle craft into Long Lake. The lot is located on the south side of Rollins Road, just west of Fairfield Road where the bike trail crosses Rollins Road



This lovely lake is in north of Chicago, near the Illinois/Wisconsin border. This is how I get to the lake.



These mallard ducks and I had the lake pretty much to ourselves on this beautiful August Thursday. I only saw three power boats in the hour-plus I paddled the perimeter of the lake, though I am certain that weekends and holidays must be a zoo out here since the Chain O'Lakes is the busiest inland recreational waterway per acre in the United States drawing weekend crowds of 30,000 and holiday crowds of 100,000.



The lake can be circumnavigated in about an hour, though for a longer paddle, a channel at the northwest corner of Long Lake allows access to Fox Lake and the entire Chain O'Lakes, a waterway system composed of 15 lakes connected by man-made channels and by the Fox River, a tributary of the Illinois River. It encompasses more than 7,100 acres of water, 488 miles of shoreline, and 45 miles of river.



Houses almost entirely surround the lake, though the southeast corner is a large wetland and the forest preserve district owns land around their put-in. Several small beaches exist for local residents.