Elk River

The Elk River is short, but it is where many long paddles end. Most visitors meet it in the village of Elk Rapids, a key trailhead on the 100-plus-mile Chain of Lakes Water Trail where paddlers can finish their trips. Rotary Park is listed with an accessible kayak launch near the river channel, and anglers fish the river for brook trout, steelhead, smallmouth bass and yellow perch, with salmon at the dam in fall and steelhead there from December into spring.

It is the last link in the Elk River Chain of Lakes, running from Elk Lake into East Grand Traverse Bay. A lot of water passes through. The Elk-Skegemog Lakes Association puts the watershed behind it at about 320,000 acres, the largest in the Grand Traverse Bay watershed, and the river supplies about 60 percent of the water flowing into the bay. The map pin marks the river mouth on the bay.

A dam on the river, first built in the 1860s, still generates hydroelectric power. It raised Elk and Skegemog lakes about five feet. It also blocks fish moving between the chain and Lake Michigan, which keeps invasive sea lamprey out of the lakes upstream. Take it slow on the water in town: the river is no-wake from the power dam up to the island.