Monday, Aug 22
The Journey from Punderson State Park to East Harbor State Park
We left Punderson State Park around 12:30 am and headed to East Harbor State Park near Port Clinton, OH. Lisa insisted she was healthy enough to drive, but we traveled with my mask on and windows open enough to ensure plenty of airflow.
East Harbor State Park is situated on the Ottawa County peninsula (or Marblehead Peninsula), stretching into the waters of Lake Erie. We crossed a causeway across Sandusky Bay to get to the peninsula.
East Harbor State Park
We arrived at the park around 2:40 pm.
The park has the largest state park campground, with 354 electric sites and 51 full hook-up sites. We had reservations for an electric-only site, so we had to fill the car with fresh water before parking. As usual for a workday, the park had few people, but all the full hookup sites were full. The campground also offers yurts.
According to the map, the campsite was near the water, but dense vegetation blocked our view. When I walked through it to the water, I only found a swamp, so we were not missing anything.
Fremont
After we set up, we drove down to Walgreens in Fremont to pick up some medication to help Lisa with her bronchitis. On our way, we passed the Sandusky County Fairground, full of parked cars, and the stadium was lit up. The 2022 County Fair was August 20 – 28. The Fremont Speedway Fair Races were happening that night.
The sun was setting as we returned to the campground.
It was 10:30 pm when we got back to the camper.
Tuesday, Aug 23
Because Lisa was still fighting the effects of COVID-19, we decided to take a drive west along the Lake Eire Coast.
East Harbor State Park
We first decided to explore the park. East Harbor State Park lies on the fringe of Ohio’s prairie marsh zone. These wetlands are remnants of the Great Black Swamp, which once covered an area 120 miles long and 30 to 40 miles wide. The swamp was nearly destroyed after intense lumbering and draining in the late 1800s. Only ten percent of Ohio’s original wetlands now remain. These wetlands produce more wildlife than any other type of habitat in Ohio.
We drove to the beach on a thin strip of land that separated East Harbor from Lake Eire. The road out to the beach separated Middle Harbor from East Harbor. Many very large lilypads covered the top of the water in the harbors. There was a 1,500-foot sandy beach on the north end, but the southern end had a storm-damaged beach, so it had been turned into a dog beach. You have to wade far out in the water for it to get very deep.
We then drove over to an area in the campground with some exposed Columbus limestone where you could see the marks of glaciers crossing the area 12,000 years ago.
Waterworks Park in Port Clinton
We then drove west along the coast to Waterworks Park in Port Clinton. This was a nice lakeshore park with landscaped grounds containing a pond with a restored boathouse, many benches along the shoreline, bathroom facilities, and picnic tables. Shores & Islands Ohio installed some “LakeEireLove” signs, the destination marketing organization for Ottawa and Erie counties. They provided a great photo opportunity with the lake in the background. A Lightkeepers sculpture was installed near the boathouse, which portrayed a lighthouse keeper leaving his post at the lighthouse after a long night’s vigil, his trusty dog in tow.
The park’s centerpiece is the Port Clinton Light, located at the park’s northern end. It was previously located on the west pier’s outer end, at the city’s harbor entrance. This lighthouse has two incarnations, each built with different materials. Only the present structure survives, as it was moved to a marina and replaced by a skeleton tower in 1952. The marina then sold the lighthouse back to the city, and it was restored in the park. At just 20 ft, Port Clinton Light is recorded as the shortest lighthouse in the state, though it is no longer used as a navigational aid.
The Wetlands
As we continued west on OH-2, we passed a lot of wetlands that had once been part of the Great Black Swamp. This swamp once covered what is now 10 counties in northwest Ohio, extending from Sandusky into Indiana. A layer of clay underground formed a barrier retaining moisture in the top layer of the soil. Without elevation changes, the flat land drained poorly into four rivers: the Sandusky, the Maumee, the Auglaize, and the Portage. The earliest settlements, starting with the Native Americans, were formed at the edge of the Great Black Swamp. The area was mostly avoided until logging and ditches transformed the swamp into farmland.
In many of these marshes, we saw canals dug right up to houses, allowing boats to be parked nearby. We also saw a lot of marinas where people either had a travel trailer or a canopy built next to their boat’s dock.
We passed the David-Besse Nuclear Power Station, which we learned later was the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979. The most severe occurred in March 2002, when maintenance workers discovered corrosion had eaten a football-sized hole into the reactor vessel head. It was also involved in the Ohio nuclear bribery scandal in 2020, where FirstEnergy bribed state legislatures to pass a $1.3 billion bailout for the nuclear power plant.
As we continued along the coastline, we took a turnoff to the Cooley Canal Yacht Club. This was a marina and yacht club at the end of a canal with travel trailers next to the boat docks. According to their website, membership is limited to two hundred fifty active members and one hundred fourteen docks.
We followed Ward Canal almost three miles up the Metzger Marsh Wildlife Area. The road ended at Lake Eire with a pier, a boat launch, and a picnic pavilion. The 558-acre wildlife area adjoins 182 acres of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge to create a 740-acre wetland adjacent to Lake Erie. Water levels are controlled to provide diversity for wetland plants and wildlife, including fish.
We enjoyed the lake’s views but did not see much in the marsh. Birding seems to be the popular pastime in these wetland areas.
We then continued west and stopped at another marina called Anchor Point Marina. This was a 500-slip marina with a large camping area, drive-up docks, and many boats in storage. We enjoyed driving through the marina, looking at all the nice boats.
We continued west along OH-2 until we reached the Maumee Bay State Park, only ten miles from Toledo. The park has a campground, a conference center, a nature center, a golf course, a marina, and sand beaches: a man-made beach at the inland lake and a second along Lake Eire. The conference center even had three restaurants. There is also a large wetland area with a 2.3-mile boardwalk, but we did not go on that trail.
We drove down to the beautiful Lake Eire beach and walked around. There were some lovely swing benches overlooking the beach, so we ate our packed lunch on one of them and enjoyed the view. Few people were on the beach, and no one was swimming in the water because algae toxin levels were too high.
Before we left the state park, we checked out the lovely campground area.
After we left the state park, we headed east over the same road and drove through Reno Beach to the other side of the Ward Canal but there was not much to see.
We then pulled into the Magee Marsh Wildlife Area. The Lake Erie marshes gained fame during the late 1800s as some of the best waterfowl hunting areas in the United States. By the mid-1900s, 30,000 acres of remaining marshland along Lake Erie, from Toledo to Sandusky, were under private club ownership. The Ohio Division of Wildlife purchased Magee Marsh Wildlife Area in August 1951 to maintain a high-quality wetland habitat for diverse wetland wildlife species. Today, it is probably best known as one of the top birding spots in North America for migrating songbirds, especially warblers.
We drove down to the Lake Eire shore and walked along the beach made of crushed sea shells. The parking area near the beach was huge, which implied that it was once a popular swimming beach, but now the bathroom facilities were closed, and the beach area is getting overgrown and being returned back to nature. While walking along the beach, someone pointed out a pair of eagles flying around. We also saw some Magee Marsh boardwalk trailheads.
We then drove back to the Ottawa County peninsula and decided to drive to the northern tip of it. Along the way, I took a detour into the area surrounding the Catawba Island Club and Golf Course to look at all the fancy boats in the marina and the homes in this area.
We then continued north to the Catawba Island State Park which ended up being a small park with a shelter house, a small cobblestone beach area, and some boat launches.
We then continued north and swung through Catawba Island (a small village) where we saw the Catawba Island Dock used by the Miller Ferries to Put-in-Bay and Middle Bass island.
We then drove down the east side of the peninsula, where we passed marina after marina and several mobile home parks and vacation home communities.
We made it back to the campsite around 5 pm.
Wednesday, Aug 24
I left around 10 am to ride along the Lake Eire Coast east of us.
Marblehead Lighthouse State Park
We first stopped at the nearby 9-acre Marblehead Lighthouse State Park, the second smallest but one of the most popular State Parks in Ohio.
From the Historical Marker:
The Marblehead Lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse in continuous operation on the Great Lakes. Originally known as the Sandusky Bay Light Station, the lighthouse was built here in 1821 to aid navigation and prevent shipwrecks. William Kelly (1779-1867) received the contract and, using local limestone, completed construction in eight weeks. The lighthouse was 50 feet high and had a diameter of 25 feet at the base and 12 feet at the top. When the lighthouse had a keeper, the beacon was updated with ever brighter lamps and more powerful lenses. At the turn of the 19th century, a watch room and new lantern room were added, increasing the lighthouse’s height 15 feet. Beacons were lit with whale oil, lard oil, kerosene, and then, in 1923, with electricity. As of 2018, the light is an LED that is visible up to eleven nautical miles.
In 1880, the original 1821 stone keeper’s house (adjacent to the lighthouse) was replaced with the large wood-frame Keeper’s House.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has maintained the property surrounding the lighthouse since 1972 and accepted ownership of the Marblehead Lighthouse tower in May 1998. Since then, the Marblehead Lighthouse Historical Society has paid for and constructed several new buildings in the park, including a replica of the 1876 U.S. Lifesaving Service Museum in 2016. The tower was renovated in 2019-2020.
We did not go inside the museum; we just walked around the grounds and enjoyed the view of Lake Eire and Sandusky Bay. We could also see the popular Cedar Point amusement park in the distance.
African Safari Wildlife Park
We then drove to the African Safari Wildlife Park just down the road.
The Wildlife Safari and a drive-thru and a walk-thru portion. We first did the drive-thru portion. We bought a large cup of food pellets at the gate, and they also gave us an empty cup to split the food between us.
The safari was broken up into three or four sections. We fed zebras, bison, ankle-watusi, fallow deer, elk, guanaco, highland cattle, llamas, sika deer, white bison, and alpacas as we drove through the various sections. All the animals were aggressive at begging for food and would stick their heads into the car as far as possible. The bigger animals would push the small ones out of the way, so we tried to reach the small ones as much as we could. To minimize the slobbering and keep them from biting us, we used the empty cup to feed the animals, which worked well.
The last section had giraffes, and a staff member sold us some leaves to feed them. We had our sunroof open, and it was bizarre to see these long necks bend down toward us.
When we exited the drive-thru safari area, we walked through the small zoo area, which had porcupines, kangaroos, lemurs, tortoises, a white alligator, white-handed gibbons, pigs, macaws and other colorful birds, and other smaller animals. We enjoyed walking through the rabbit cage and seeing all the cute bunnies asleep in their dirt holes and tiny huts. We also enjoyed watching the tortoises walking around eating the lettuce spread all over their cage. The gibbons were active and stared out at us as much as we stared at them.
Aviary Adventure
The Aviary Adventure was a lot of fun. We purchased three budgie feed sticks for $5 and then walked into a cage with about 500 parakeets or budgies. They swarmed us and walked all over our arms and shoulders as soon as we walked in. Most were interested in the feed sticks, but some just enjoyed walking around on us. One just enjoyed biting me, and no matter how many times I tried to shake it off, it kept coming back. The birds seemed to want me, but we did see the birds avoid some people.
We attended one of their special encounters shows where they brought out some animals and talked about them. We were able to touch some of them such as the tarantula and snake.
We ate our packed lunch at their outdoor Safari Cafe on one of their picnic tables, and then we walked around some more, watching a family try to feed the porcupines with ladles. We felt sorry for them because they paid extra for this encounter, and the porcupines were not interested in the food.
Then we watched the HogWILD pig race. The staff first introduced their pigs with names like “Brittney Squeals” and then demonstrated that they could perform basic commands like walking through a hoop. They then loaded them into a starting chute and raced them around a small fenced-in track while we cheered them on.
We then decided to go to the drive-thru safari again. This time, they gave us two cups of food for free, but the animals seemed a little less interested because it was hotter and they just wanted to sleep, or maybe because they were already bored with the visitors. However, we still had plenty of beggars, and it was fun interacting with them.
Lake Eire Coast
It was after 2:30 when we left the Wildlife Safari and headed east along the Lake Eire coast.
We drove along the piers in Sandusky, where we saw some interesting statues of trapeze artists on cables in Shoreline Park. We continued east along the Grand Army of the Republic Highway or US-6, which followed the coastline.
In Vermillion, we stopped at the Vermilion Lighthouse near the mouth of the Vermilion River. The 34-foot tower was erected in 1991 as a replica of the original removed in 1929. The first Vermilion Lighthouse was a wooden structure that was built in 1847. In 1877, a new permanent 34-foot tower was created from iron recycled from smooth-bored Columbian cannons that had been rendered obsolete after the Battle of Fort Sumter in the American Civil War. After it was discovered to be leaning to one side in 1929, it was replaced with an 18-foot steel tower.
We turned around in Vermillion and returned to the campground along the faster OH-2 around 4:30.
Purple Parrot Ice Cream
Just outside our campground was an ice cream sand that we had been eyeing called the Purple Parrot. Since this was our last day, we decided to stop and enjoy some ice cream.
We were back at the campground around 6 pm.
Thursday, Aug 25
We packed the camper and headed to Grand Lake St Mary State Park around 11:30.