Long run east to Erie, PA

 Friday, July 14 -- Cleveland to Erie -- 97 miles

We played the weather forecast right this time. Lake Erie was very calm all morning, with a light chop out of the NE developing in the afternoon. We got underway at 9 and pulled into our dock at the Wolverine Park Marina in Erie at 3:20. It was nice for John to be in Erie harbor again, having visited it many times over the years. The waterfront has changed considerably and is now set up primarily for tourists, versus mostly commercial and industrial use years ago. There are waterfront hotels and lots of restaurants.

Erie harbor is formed by a long sand peninsula called Presque Isle that sticks out into the lake a couple miles. There's nothing else like it along the entire coast, which is mostly modest rock or clay cliffs. Wikipedia says it is a moraine from the last glacial period. The entire peninsula is a state park. The photo below shows the peninsula in the foreground, the shoreline east of Erie in the background, and a ridge behind the coast in the far distance. 

And here is the Presque Isle Lighthouse. Built in 1872 and still in service (although automated of course). The rocks behind the boat are a short breakwall set off from and parallel to the shore. Much of the beach at the northernmost stretch of the peninsula has these breakwalls regularly spaced along the shore, presumably to prevent erosion. They may well be effective, but they don't look very nice.

The interesting sights along the way from Cleveland to Erie were (1) the abandoned power plant in Eastlake, Ohio. We saw maybe half a dozen more of these by the time we got to Buffalo, though not always so big. It will be interesting to see what happens to these old plants, as they occupy valuable lakefront property but will cost a lot to demolish and clean up.

And (2) the lighthouse at the entrance to Fairport Harbor at the mouth of the Grand River. Built in 1925, later automated and still in service, Wikipedia says it was sold at auction in 2011 for $71k to someone who planned to turn it into a summer house. Wonder how that went?

(3) The stately plume of water vapor from the cooling tower of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant.

(4) The Mansion at Vincent William Winery in Madison, Ohio. Their website calls it "Cleveland's only boutique winery, hotel and restaurant along the shores of Lake Erie". One of our northern Ohio friends needs to check out this place and report back!

 

(6) The harbor light at Ashtabula, built in 1905 and automated in 1973, which Wikipedia says made it the last lighthouse on the Great Lakes to be manned. It is now a local museum.

And last but not least, (7) the iron ore transloading facility at Conneaut, Ohio. Wikipedia says that this is where iron ore is loaded onto rail cars for Pittsburgh area steel mills, but doesn't say who owns and operates this facility. The only operating blast furnace left in Pittsburgh is at the US Steel Edgar Thompson works, so my guess would be that this is a US Steel facility.

Once settled in at the Wolverine Park Marina we did a couple loads of laundry (oh boy!) and tried our best to be polite to the people BLASTING music from the back of their boats onto the dock that we had to walk past to get to the marina facilities and get to town. We had a nice dinner at the Sheraton restaurant overlooking Presque Isle Bay. The blasting music and associated partying ended about one in the morning. John slept through it but not Janet.