Anyone who looks at a map of New York State will recognize a cluster of spindly lakes scarred across the interior. They are the basins hollowed by the heavy hands of the glaciers. They are the Finger Lakes.

Satellite View of the Finger Lakes

My goal is to bag all eleven Finger Lakes. What constitutes the bagging of a lake? Merely paddling around the put-in just won’t do. In a fit of masochism, I decided that paddling along the entire shoreline is the only way to bag a Finger Lake.

This is a tall order. The combined shoreline of all Finger Lakes is 360 miles.Measured by me using Google Earth I’d have to get in shape. It made sense to tackle the Finger Lakes in increasing order of shoreline length. From the shortest shoreline to longest, here’s a list of my posts documenting my Finger Lakes odyssey:

  1. Canadice Lake
  2. Honeoye Lake
  3. Otisco Lake
  4. Hemlock Lake
  5. Conesus Lake
  6. Owasco Lake
  7. Skaneateles Lake
  8. Canandaigua Lake
  9. Keuka Lake
  10. Seneca Lake
  11. Cayuga Lake