Day 9

Now that Ohio is officially on a "stay at home" order, what did the Morehouse crew do today?  Go adventuring, of course! (we are impossible, I know...) Yesterday, to our credit, we barely moved.  Went to pick up lunch at Boulevard and for a short run in the evening and I think that is the only time I left the house... 

Today, though!  The sun was out and the temperature was in the 50's and my Saggitarius soul needed to feel like it really IS spring break and GO somewhere.  So, we went on a Lighthouses of Lake Erie driving tour, and it was grand.  (I promise we were well behaved, and kept our social distance at each stop.)

It was just so fun to see new places!  We'd never been to ANY of the towns we visited and the vareity of architecture and historic downtowns with their differing amounts of "beachiness" was just as much fun as the lighthouses themselves.   If I squinted a little bit and looked past the overly-quiet streets and the somewhat nippy lake breezes, it almost felt like vacation-explorations in Charleston or Outer Banks or Michigan.  And considering that it is still technically the off- season, it wasn't that hard to ignore the quiet.  One does not expect a beach town in Ohio to be hopping on March 25.   We posed for selfies and climbed on rocks and read informative signs and olged pretty old houses just like we would in a world that had not gone mad, and it was delicious. 

Here are a few photo highlights and observations from our lakefront destinations.

 First stop:  Marblehead State Park.  An hour and a half due west and across Sandusky Bay to find this little treasure of a park.  We were utterly charmed by the bedrock  and the waves and the classic whitehouse shining against the blue blue sky...

 In these photos they are looking across the bay at Cedar Point and Jack is describing the coasters to Ivy....

 Next stop, after some detouring in a small summer RV park with a street called "Lighthouse Way" (thanks, Siri...) we finally found the Port Clinton lighthouse.  The kids found it to be summmarily disappointing but I thought it was charming.  It is, apparently, the oldest timber frame lighthouse in the State, and was moved from its point of service at the mouth of a river to this little lakefront park in 2001.

An unexpected surprise was the neighborhood of absolutely perfect turn of the century homes just across the street from the park....

 Next stop:  Vermillion!  Right outside the Maritime museum and across a bay from a freakishly adorable development of all-white cottages on little canals, down the street from the picturesque historic downtown, complete with tearoom and cute little shops.   While the lighthouse was less than impressive, Vermillion itself is going on the "let's come back in the summer" list...

 Finally, the Lorain lighthouse.  It appeared to be lovely but was completely inaccessible.  To get this view we had to pass not one but two "Do not enter" signs and wind our way down a gravel drive with fences all over, to get to the parking lot for the municipal boat ramp.  A bit anticlimactic, this one.

 But we did get to see this really creepy tree full of vultures on the way!

 And pose with a lighthouse on my head!

I'm grateful for my sweet family who indulged me today in this little outing.   Between the lake views, the historic houses, and the sense of exploration, I got to immerse myself in my favorite things and take my mind right off of reality.  Felt more like myself than I have in weeks.  Like I could really breathe, and laugh, and everything might turn out ok.

Hmmm.  Maybe I'll go on a lighthouse tour every day....?

Back home and hunkered down this evening, though, it still feels a bit like normal life, because we were gone for enough of the day that the housework piled up in our absence.  Phew.  We were getting WAY too on top of that laundry.  This is more like it.