It's the same body of water, one lake. It's just massive, and surrounds the lower peninsula of Michigan, so they gave each side of the lake a different name.
Truly it's massive, it behaves almost like the ocean in a lot of ways. A lot of water.
Yeah it's crazy, the Mackinac bridge is like 5 miles long, no foot traffic allowed except for one day of the year when thousands of people get together and walk across it.
Right!? I've lived here my whole life, so it's normal for me. But when we had friends in to visit from a coastal state, the waves were big, and they were amazed. They kept forgetting it wasn't the ocean, and they loved that they didn't have to rinse off the salt afterwards 😁