Around Lake Erie by Scooter

(This 701st column was first published in the September 5, 2004 issue of The Buffalo Sunday News.)

The geography of Lake Erie is straightforward: length 241 miles, maximum breadth 57 miles, surface area 9900 square miles, shoreline (including islands) 871 miles. Those bare facts, however, convey very little about the life of this inland sea.

To gain a better feel for Lake Erie I rode my motor scooter around it along shoreline roads as close to the lake as possible. Parts of my 900-mile trip followed signs designating the Seaway Trail, Lake Erie Circle Tour, Talbot Trail and even Great Lakes Circle Tour, but I often departed from these highways to ride still closer to the lake. My trip took five 14-hour days.

The first question I was asked when I returned was: Why not go by car? Bicycle riders know the answer to that question. The experience "out in the open" is entirely different. You feel a part of the environment. And now that I am beyond peddling uphill, my scooter solves that problem and saves time as well.

I cannot convey in one column this wonderful experience. For details I recommend the book that served as a major trip planning resource: Scott Carpenter's Lake Erie Journal: Guide to the Official Lake Erie Circle Tour. Instead, I offer here only a few vignettes.

• Thankfully, although they have been made obsolete by radar and satellite-driven positioning systems, many old but still attractive lighthouses have been retained, some serving as museums.

• The lake color varied with weather and light. Most striking was the purple shading along a stretch off the Canadian shore. A child painting this would surely be scolded for using the wrong crayon.

• Little creativity went into many street and club names I met: Lakeshore, Lakeside, Harbor and Landing were standards. There were also several North Shore Roads in Ohio, which seemed off to me as this was clearly the south shore of the lake. I was pleased to have my belief confirmed in Canada where they referred to their north shore. And they also correctly named a South Coast Road, using a term seemingly unknown to Ohioans. I did note two more stirring road names: the Purple Heart Highway and the Boulevard of 500 Flags.

• There wasn't much time for birding but I saw many gulls and vultures, a few terns, dozens of kestrels and one osprey. Starlings were ubiquitous but the most noticeable birds were mourning doves. Every few hundred yards I would see up to a half-dozen on utility wires.

• Anyone interested in beautiful homes should ride along Cleveland's East and West Lakeside Drives. Especially attractive are the fully mature trees that shade their manicured lawns and gardens.

• According to the Eriez Indians, Erie's beautiful Presque Isle Park is the left arm of Manitou, the Great Spirit, reaching out into the lake to protect sailors.

• Only recently have I begun reading roadside markers. Some provide information of only local interest but you never know what to expect. In western Pennsylvania I turned in to examine a huge stone honoring David M. Roderick, an industrialist who contributed to conservation. My intrusion caused an eagle to rise from a snag behind the memorial and sail out over the lake and before I left a fawn dashed out across the grass.

• Within a mile I came to a landmark designating the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. It was erected in 1881 after a resurvey of the original 1786 boundary. This represents the point of the Erie Triangle, that odd little tab of Pennsylvania that gives that state access to Lake Erie. The 315 square miles were purchased in 1778 from the Iroquois for 75 cents an acre and retained despite claims by four other states.

• Fortunately I rode through Toledo, Detroit and Windsor on a Saturday. There I found myself in a different world of steaming factories, loading docks, lines of railroad cars and, worst of all, weedy deserted fields around abandoned buildings.

• I found the maritime museums in Erie and Vermillion, Ohio very informative, but I enjoyed most the museum associated with the Put-in-Bay Oliver Hazard Perry Memorial. I had to abandon my scooter and take the ferry out to visit the museum and monument on South Bass Island off Sandusky, Ohio. From near the top of the 352-foot tower I could see where Perry, arguably our luckiest naval commander, defeated and captured an entire British squadron in 1813.

• Ontario's Talbot Trail is named for Colonel Thomas Talbot who served in the mid-1800s as a despotic land agent for over 100 square miles extending through six counties bordering the lake.

• My scooter gets over 100 miles per gallon of gas. Unfortunately, it only holds one gallon. This represented a problem because gas stations were scarce along the back roads I followed in Canada.

I experienced a major problem on the fourth day of my trip. Running low on gas, the region began to seem like a kind of Death Valley and I wasn't at all sure I could make it to fill my tank. I turned north toward a larger highway and the city of St. Thomas, just making it to the city and a gas station with the gauge well down in the red. But when I was filling the tank I noticed that a box that I had mounted on the back of the scooter was gone. In it were my binoculars, camera, portable radio and other lesser belongings. I had not even heard it fall.

You can just imagine how frantic I felt.

I had stopped and retrieved something from the box about ten miles out of town so I turned and retraced my route, trying to look for it in the ditch. It was now pitch dark but the scooter headlight helped some. All the way out: no box. When I turned back I rode well off the road edge at the lip of the parallel ditch, even sliding down into it at one place. Unfortunately the same results: no box.

Last chance: I would check the police. The St. Thomas Main Street was full of teenagers, many of them yelling greetings to me whenever I passed. But they didn't give very good directions. Finally I followed one of those "P" signs to a city metropolitan building. Arriving just as a police car pulled in the parking lot, I parked my scooter and went over to ask the policeman for help. My unexpected approach from the rear scared him for a minute, but he recovered and directed me to the entrance of the building.

When I entered a room designated police and walked up to the counter, I was greeted by a young woman in uniform, Police Cadet Lisa Johnson with "You must be Gerry".

Relief flooded through me.

A local citizen, John DeCaluwe, had found the box and turned it in. Ms. Johnson had learned my name from something in the box and had called both The Buffalo News and my home. Fortunately Doris hadn't answered or she would have been frightened to death. Cadet Johnson then gave me the box and promised to call The News back to tell them that I had been found.

Off I went to find a place to sleep. I was camping out.

Despite the truth of the statement, I'll no longer refer to Lake Erie as one of the smaller Great Lakes. And I will continue to hold our Canadian neighbors in highest regard.-- Gerry Rising

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For an account by Daniel Migues of his far more strenuous but in many ways more satisfying bike ride around Lake Erie, see his account.