Let's Go Places: Pelee Island

It's time for our second stop on The Great Island Bender of 2023 and our first of four islands of the trip.  I'm very excited to take you to Pelee Island.

Here's a quick reminder of where we are - right in the middle of Lake Erie on the Canada side of the border.

Last year I spent a bit of time on the US side Erie Islands, so I was very curious to check out the Canadian island that's just a few miles away.  To start with, the land mass is HUGE and the population is bigger compared to the other islands.  The stats according to Google are 16 square miles with a full time population of 300 and a summer population of 1,500.  The Pelee resident that you've heard of is Margaret Atwood (two short video clips of her on the island here and more Atwood Pelee talk here).  Look, obviously she doesn't post her address and day to day movements online, but she has said that she's done a lot of writing on Pelee and if I had to guess, it sounds like she lives there less than full time but more than just the summer.

What's on Pelee Island?  The big thing is the Pelee Island Winery, there's an old lighthouse up north, and then on the south there's Fish Point, which gives you the bragging rights of being on the southernmost point of Canada.

Slight correction...Fish Point the southernmost point of Canada where people are allowed.  The true southernmost land point of Canada is Middle Island, but people aren't allowed there.  It's a designated resting place for wildlife making their way across the lake. 

By the way, while we're talking about north and south, we all know that Canada is NORTH of the US.  Period end of sentence.

Except it turns out that 27 US states are have borders that are north of Pelee Island.  When I first heard that, I thought that it was tourism hyperbole but no, it's a fact Jack.  It's true that most of California is south of Canada but not all of it.  Mind blown.

Let's Get Our Pelee On

It all started with a ferry ride.  The Pelee ferry is massive compared to the US ferries.  Once you're on the boat it's 90 minutes to the island.

Although the boat was pretty full, once we got to Pelee and I drove off the ferry, everyone kind of disappeared.  I wasn't clear on where I was supposed to park, so I drove around for a bit and visited the lighthouse to kill time until I could check into the Airbnb.  Once I got there, I never touched my car again until I left the island.  

Let me show you some of the things that I saw on the first pass through (pictures taken over the course of the next few days as I biked around).

The Sights of Pelee Island

Stoneman (2009 sculpture)

The North American Shoe Tree (note: there was a half marathon on the island the weekend before I was there and I wonder if any of the shoes were from the race).

There's no missing the school - pheasant hunting is a big thing in the fall.

 

Just in case you can't make out the sign, their tagline is "Canada's most southern school".  But the school is on the north side of the island so just saying, the field is wide open for someone else to take the title.

The old town hall is the home of the Pelee museum, which had a lot of good background on island history.  But that's not what we need to talk about in this photo.

Because if you're saying WAIT WHOA IS THAT REALLY A...GUYS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.  IT'S NOT JUST A PHONE BOOTH IT'S A WORKING PHONE BOOTH.  DIAL TONE AND EVERYTHING.  For a minute I thought that I had time traveled.

The lighthouse is on the north of the island.  It's a short walk through a nature preserve and then another short walk up the beach to get there.  You can't go inside, but it's a pretty view.

Fish Point

I made two visits to Fish Point.  The first was on my second day during my grand bike tour of the island, and my second was on my last day when I had just enough time before the ferry.  

The view from the marsh on the way to the point:

I followed the trail to the shore, which is what it said to do on the map.  Now I just had to follow the shore line down to the point.  Except...this is what the beach looked like.  Trees everywhere.

Hmm, that couldn't be the way to the point.  I went back to the trail and it seemed like maybe the trail continued parallel to the shore.  Except that it didn't, it was a gray area of at least one other human has been here before and dude there's no trail here.  I went back and forth between the trail-that-wasn't-a-trail and the mess of trees on the beach and made very slow progress.  When I was in the woods I got enough scratches and had enough suspicions about poison ivy that I chose climbing over trees as the lesser of two evils.  The further I went the more it was clear that I was somewhere that I wasn't supposed to be but eventually I could see the tip and I knew it wasn't much further.

Finally I made my way out of the maze and on to the point.

It looks very similar to Point Pelee and once I got there I wasn't mad about having to climb over trees.  I've never been to the northernmost or southernmost point of the US, but now I can say that I've been to the southernmost point of Canada x 3 - southern most point of mainland Canada at Pelee Point, southernmost point of Canada for people at Fish Point, and I sailed by the true southernmost land of Middle Island on the ferry on my way out.

For my return trip I wasn't about to go back the way I had come, so I continued along the shoreline in the opposite direction.  But where was I supposed to turn in to get back to the main trail?  All that I had to go on is that there was a curve ahead and the map showed that the turnoff was before the curve.  There were several places that looked like they could be the start of a trail, but they were all dead ends.  Finally I found an opening with two tiny orange flags on either side which turned out to be the correct answer.

Let's take a look - the left is the map that's in the Pelee brochure and the biker's guide - the trail is the yellow line - go down to the coast and loop back on the other side of the coast.  The trailhead map is on the right==>and the trailhead map is the "correct" way to get there without having to climb over a bunch of trees.  Just sayin' a sign on the trail itself would have been mighty helpful.

For my second visit, I was now a pro so I easily followed the "real" trail to the point.  When I arrived I saw two other people there.  They asked me how to get back to the trailhead.  I said "oh no, did you climb over all of those trees to get here?"  Yessiree they had.  So it wasn't just me who got fooled by the map.

The Winery

Fun fact, the major industry of Pelee Island and the other Lake Erie Islands is wine grape growing.  Where there are wine grapes, there are wineries.  If this sounds like a strange place for wine making, just put your finger on Pelee on a globe and spin it around.  It's parallel to the many other wine making regions ("the wine belt").

But I must confess that I am very skeptical of Erie Wine.  I visited a winery on the US side last year and while I enjoyed the tour...how can I say this nicely...guess I can't...it was the worst wine that I've ever had.  While of course I wanted to visit the Pelee Island Winery because everyone is nuts about it, I did not have high hopes.

I did a tour and a tasting at noon.  In a perfect world I would have done the tasting in the evening, but the winery wasn't open at night while I was there so it was day drinking or nothing.  The notable thing about the winery is that it was the only place on Pelee where there were more than a handful of people at one time.  It wasn't crowded by any stretch but the headcount was decent.

The tour was chock full of fun wine facts, including that although the island's climate is excellent for growing grapes, the power supply isn't adequate for wine making, so most of the production happens back on the mainland.  The wine that I had at the tasting was excellent.  There were four samples, and they were all very good.  They were also very potent, so I got myself a good buzz and had to take a very long lunch break on their pavilion afterwards before I could get back on the bike.  I'm not complaining, just reporting the facts.

The cost of the tour and tasting included a credit toward a purchase, but I passed on that.  I felt that I'd gotten 20 CAD/15 USD worth of entertainment/booze and also I felt that there was a good chance that the wine might not be as good off the island.  Plus my cottage included a gift basket with a small bottle of Merlot, so I already had Pelee wine to take home.  

As part of the research for this post I drank the Merlot.  It was decent, loads better than my previous Erie wine experience, but not OMG THIS IS THE BEST WINE EVER.  My recommendation if you go there is YES YES YES do the tour and tasting, use your own judgement on buying wine to take home.

Biking on Pelee

Biking is a thing on Pelee and the ferry has dedicated biking maps of the island.  The outer loop is 18 miles and there are some suggested shorter routes.

But Houston, there is a problem that was evident shortly after I pulled off the boat and started driving down the main road.  Most of the outer loop road of the island is paved, but a lot of it looks like this:

  

There are stretches that have gravel and those were not fun to drive on.  That brings us to the next issue.  This isn't some poor schlub who's fallen behind on their car washing.  This is what all of the cars looked like on Pelee, including mine after that first loop.  These roads are dirty and dusty.

There wasn't a lot of traffic on the island, but I did have concerns about what it would be like to ride mile after mile on gravel with each passing car kicking up a massive swarm of dust.  Look I didn't come here to sit around so I was determined to at least try biking.  If it sucked then it sucked, it cost me nothing to try.

Once I got out there it was fabulous of course and biking accounted for the majority of my time on Pelee.  Traffic was very light so I didn't have car after car kicking up a dust storm.  For the most part I was never on dirt for that long so it wasn't that big of a deal.  The exception was the east side of the island which was very heavy on the gravel.  That's the beach side of the island where the road is closer to the water...maybe it just isn't possible to pave it????  Another shout out is that the roads are flat, so biking was a breeze.  For this exact reason, if I was still running I would definitely put the half marathon on my race bucket list.

On my first full day on the island I biked the outer loop.  Or at least I tried to.  I missed a chunk on the south side of the island because the road is set far enough back from the lake that you can't follow the shoreline AND the bike route sign is pointing to a different bike route that's not the main loop because of course it is.

Once I realized what had happened it was too late to turn back so I went with it and made my way to the east side and got MOST of the loop.  But the more I thought about it, the more that I felt I'd gotten gypped so the next day I went back and got the missing stretch of road.

That's also how I happened to be in the right place at the right time to see this guy. Pelee does have a way of making things up to you.

 

On the US islands the most common form of transportation is a golf cart, and I was surprised to see that wasn't the case on Pelee.  Most people drove cars.  Of course there were also a good number of bikes, so in spite of the dirt and gravel, my vote is that biking is the way to go on Pelee.

Pelee Food

There aren't a lot of restaurants on Pelee but there are enough.  The issue is that when I was there in early June there isn't enough business for them to be open full time.  Many places closed in the afternoon or were only open a few days a week, so they didn't line up with my meal times.  

There is one grocery store, which closes at 3:00 and I don't think it's open seven days a week.  I went in for bragging rights, and they had a good variety of food and the prices seemed fair.

Here are my two big shout outs:

Coneheads is an ice cream/food shack.  I never got around to trying the ice cream, but the food was very good.  I'm not vegan but I like to try vegan food, and when you're on a small island in Canada, this is the place to get it.  I had a Buddha bowl for lunch my first day, and a breakfast hand pie with tofu and vegan sausage as a snack right before leaving.

The Westview Tavern is the restaurant with the closest to normal restaurant business hours and I believe it's the only place that's open seven days a week.  When I looked at the menu online it just looked like a bar with bar food so it wasn't at the top of my priority list.  However, when it was the one restaurant that was open after my first big day of biking my enthusiasm soared.

I was the only customer at first, though a few more people came in during the course of the meal.

I didn't get the name of the beer that I had, but it was fabulous.  For food I had the Blue Moon, which is a burger with blue cheese sauce and it was to die for.  Yes I was insanely hungry but I also think that the food really was that good.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

Of course I was a little bit sad to leave, but I was also ready.  After my final visit to Fish Point I drove back to "downtown" and sat on a bench with a lake view and watched the big ferry come in.

I laughed when I saw the horde of sparkling clean cars drive off the ferry.  On Pelee that's a dead giveaway that you just got off the boat.

But the big Pelee ferry wasn't our ride back to the US.  The US ferry was tiny, a reflection that there's much less traffic from the south side of the lake.  It was also one way loading and we had to back our cars into the ferry (with plenty of guidance from the ferry staff).

We had to show our passports before they let us drive on and there were plenty of warnings that yes you were about to cross an international border and there would be customs on the other side.

We set sail and I got one last picture of Fish Point.

Here is Middle Island, which is the last land point in Canada (and as previously mentioned, it's strictly for the birds...seriously birds and other wildlife need a place to rest while they're crossing the lake and some of the smaller islands are set aside for that purpose).

Very soon the US islands were in sight...here's a preview of what's coming next in our journey (somebody please make my day and tell me that you know what the tall building is and if not don't worry, you're going to hear all about it soon).

An hour and 45 minutes later we pulled into Sandusky, which is the US port of entry.  Heads up that Sandusky is a worthy vacation spot in its own right and we just might have to talk about that some time.  I'm not an amusement park person, but if you've heard of Cedar Point, that's where we are.

Into the ferry dock.

Into customs.

If the border crossing was a little rough into Windsor, getting back home was a breeze.  They didn't ask me a single question.  I had to roll down the car windows and open the trunk.  They took a quick look and a peek at my passport and that was it.  I was back in the US of A and free to roam.

How to Pelee

Pelee Island ended up being a 10/10 but with caveats.  You need to know how to Pelee.

• Forget everything that you know about the US Erie islands - this is a different world.  You'll see what I mean in the next few posts when we go there.
  
• The biggest pro and the biggest con of Pelee Island are the same: "there's nothing to do there".
• There are some tours that you can do but I passed on them because I wanted to explore on my own and not be tied down to having to be at specific places at specific times.
  
• I was there in early June during the week, which is still kind of ahead of "the season".  It felt very empty (both in a good and a bad way).  A lot of businesses were only open during the day and for a few days a week.
• But honestly I can't imagine being there when it's more crowded.  There are only three parking spaces for Fish Point and at times they were full even with light traffic.
  
• If you like being super connected, you need to go somewhere else.  The only internet is via satellite and wifi is not a thing here.  I saw a 2021 news story about fiber coming to the island in July 2023 but I don't see any updates on that and didn't hear a word about it during my visit in June 2023.  I had enough signal to connect on my phone if I was motivated enough so it wasn't NO internet but it was definitely limited internet.
  
• Related note, cell service is spotty and you're between two countries.  I have Google Fi so I can go anywhere in the world that I want without roaming charges but if you don't have international you might get hosed.  I've seen my phone connect to Canadian service on the US side and to US on the Canada side - it's a small world.  BTW I was shocked to learn from chatting with some Canadian friends that Google Fi is only available in the US.
  
• Every place that I went took credit cards so I never got any Canadian cash.  There is one ATM on the island if for some reason you need it. 
• You're on an island, so there's no city water system.  The house where I stayed had a filter so the tap water was drinkable/tasted just like normal water, but you need to check.  Water drinkability was discussed in every rental listing that I looked at.
• I saw a lot of talk about bugs and snakes, so I was prepared for anything.  But I got nothing.  The only snakes that I saw were of the North American Roadkill Variety.  Yes there were bugs especially at night and in the early morning but I got fewer bug bites on my time on the island than I would just sitting out in my suburban backyard.  Either I was extremely lucky or Off Deep Woods really works...I think it was luck.  Also from the chatter that I'm seeing it looks like I was ahead of the mayfly season which affects all of the islands and shore areas.  All of this is to say that you might have a very different experience.
  

I have a few criticisms about Pelee which I've touched on.  I think that part of this could be due to the fact that the pandemic was not nice to the economy, but I also think that there's a part that's longer standing.

• They're really weird about signs.  It's not clear where you're supposed to park, and a lot of buildings have no signs on them.
  
• Incorrect road signs for the bicycle loop and incorrect map for the trail at Fish Point.
  
• I would have appreciated a heads up about the dirt and gravel roads.  Although if I had known maybe I wouldn't have come or I might have left my bike at home so maybe it's better that I didn't know going in??????
  

Let's Wrap it Up

Thing #1: Did I need to spend three days?  I'm going to say no.  I think that if you come to Pelee at all you should stay overnight, but 24-48 hours will probably do it.  With that said, I also didn't mind spending three days there.

Thing #2: Would I go back?  Maybe, but not anytime soon.  Part of it is that it's a haul to get across the border, and part of it is that I really feel that I saw everything and left nothing undone.  That's a very different story than the US islands where I've made multiple trips and still have stuff left to do.   But on the other hand, Pelee really grew on me and I keep finding myself watching people's YouTube videos of their visits to Pelee so...

Thing #3: Would I recommend going to Pelee?  The answer is that if you like what you read here, then get on it.  If you're reading this and saying "not my cup of tea" then you've got your answer. 

What do you think - yea or nay to Pelee Island?  When is the last time that you saw a working phone booth?

Until next time - we're going to start exploring the US side islands.