Trip tools
Great Lakes trip planning tools.
Free calculators and live forecasts for planning a Great Lakes trip: drive times and day-by-day itineraries, circle tours, car ferries, the northern lights, swimming conditions and freighter watching.
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Road trip builder
Pick towns, lighthouses and parks. Get real drive times, the best order, even days, Google Maps directions, a calendar and a GPS file.
Build a trip -
Circle tour planner
Split the Lake Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie or Ontario circle tour into the number of days you have, with every night in a town.
Plan a circle tour -
Ferry or drive?
Is the S.S. Badger, Lake Express or Chi-Cheemaun faster or cheaper than driving around? Compare door to door, with fares and fuel.
Compare the ferry -
Northern lights tonight
Tonight's aurora odds at the darkest Great Lakes viewing spots, combining the Kp forecast, cloud cover and the moon.
Check tonight's odds -
Water temperatures & swim check
Today's surface temperature on all five lakes versus normal, and a beach-by-beach check of waves, alerts and cold water.
Check the water -
Ship watcher
The best places to watch 1,000-foot freighters up close, from the Soo Locks to the Welland Canal, with ships on their way.
Watch the ships
- Not sure where to go?Answer a few questions and we'll match you with a lake, a season and a road trip.
- Ready-made road tripsOur classic Great Lakes itineraries, each one ready to customize in the trip builder.
- What's happening right nowEvery lake, region and town page has live weather, alerts, buoys and local news.
Good to know
About the trip tools.
- Are the trip tools free?
- Yes. Every tool is free, needs no account and saves nothing on our servers. Trips and settings live in the page address, so you can bookmark or share them.
- Where does the live information come from?
- Northern lights forecasts use NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, with cloud cover from the National Weather Service and Environment Canada. Water temperatures come from NOAA GLERL's satellite analysis and NDBC buoys, and ship positions from AIS receivers.
- How accurate are the drive times?
- Drive times come from OpenStreetMap road data routed with OSRM and assume ordinary traffic. They are for planning, not navigation: allow extra time for summer weekends, construction, border crossings and ferry lines.