Let's Go Places: The Ohio Lighthouses of Lake Erie

Friends, today we are going back to the beginning of my solo travels.  How did I go from being someone who wasn't really into travel to someone who now drops everything to build a long weekend trip at the drop of a hat?

It started with lighthouses.  Let's go back to the summer of 2022 and I'll take you with me on my first tentative steps outside the house.

The first seed was planted in the late summer of 2021.  I happened across a Facebook post that linked to this article about lighthouses in Ohio.

Lighthouses????? in Ohio????  These words did not belong in the same sentence.

My history with lighthouses is that I've been to the Outer Banks in North Carolina a few times, and one of my favorite places there is the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is the tallest lighthouse in North America.  I don't love heights, but for whatever reason I love climbing tall buildings with spiral staircases, so there is just something about lighthouses that appeal to me.

 

After my brain processed that someone on the internet was claiming that there were lighthouses in Ohio,  I started clicking the links and checking them out.  I had been to a few of the towns where the lighthouses were, but they weren't places that stood out in memory.  The thing that did stand out was that all of the lighthouses seemed to stop doing tours after Labor Day.  It was right before Labor Day, and I did not drop everything to check them out so that's how our story jumps to the summer of 2022.

The rest of the fam was headed out on their summer Mega Boy Scout Camp, and I remembered that article about lighthouses in Ohio.  Hmmm...Lake Erie isn't much to see.  Whatever these Ohio lighthouses were, they weren't going to compete with Cape Hatteras, so really I should just save time and gas and stay home.  I laugh at this now, but I was cheap AF back then.

I talked a good game, but I kept coming back to that article.  At a certain point it was inevitable that I was going to dip my toe in the water and check out a lighthouse.

But which one?  The text of the article has changed since 2022, and right now it describes eight lighthouses, but back when I saw it, it only mentioned six - it's fine if you don't believe me, but the header on the article says there are six lighthouses.  There are many more than six lighthouses in Ohio on Lake Erie, but for purposes of ones that you can tour, I think the article did a good job.  And hey, it certainly got me out of the house and into the world.

Somehow I finally decided that I would work my way from east to west to see the lighthouses.  I knew that I could see more than one at a time, but it was too overwhelming to work out the logistics, so I started simply with one lighthouse per excursion.  Finally one fateful Sunday in June the journey began.  I packed a lunch, grabbed my good camera that had been collecting dust for a few years, and headed out to see a lighthouse.

Lighthouse #1 Ashtabula

If there is a word to describe how I felt the day that I set off to see my first lighthouse, that word is s-t-u-p-i-d.  I was very confused about what I was going to find in Ashtabula.  I knew that you can't go into the lighthouse, and there seemed to be some confusion online about the best place to go to see it.  The article just describes it as "hard to reach".  The recommended viewing spot was a place called Walnut Beach, so that is where I headed.

As soon as I got to the beach I stopped feeling stupid in a hurry.  What was this magical world?

Toto, we were not in Kansas anymore!

The lighthouse was a decent way away.  I waded into the lake and followed the breakwater as far as I could, which still wasn't that close.  But none of that mattered.  It was a frickin' lighthouse!

I hung out on the beach for a while and ate lunch, took a few hundred pictures, and went home.  I left with a bounce in my step and a lightheartedness that I hadn't felt in a long while.

Lighthouse #2 Fairport Harbor

The next Saturday I set out again with a packed lunch and my camera and arrived at Fairport Harbor.  Yep, when you're going to see a lighthouse you don't need your GPS to say "you have arrived" to know that you have arrived.

 

At Fairport we were upping the game because the lighthouse is open for tours.  $10 gets you into the museum in the old keeper's house and into the tower.  There were a couple of people in the museum, but no one in the lighthouse.  I eagerly stepped inside.

It was pretty dark in there.  Pro tip, if it is your first visit or if it's been a while since you've been in a lighthouse, it does take a hot minute to get your bearings.

 

Also a tiny Great Lakes lighthouse is a lot smaller than the gigantic Cape Hatteras lighthouse.   I felt a little closed in as I turned around and around in my path up the staircase, and I had to put Photoshop in overdrive to get this much light into the picture.

At the top there was darkness. It's hard to describe and the lack of a picture doesn't help, but the entrance to the platform was two metal shutters that were fairly heavy.  I had a moment of doubt, was I "supposed to" open them and was it OK to go out on the platform?  I decided yes and yes and very soon I had my reward.

I surveyed the scene and my camera focused on a building off in the distance.  Huh, it sure looked like another lighthouse.  But my reference article said that there were only six so that couldn't be right.  It was some random building with a tower that looked like but was not a lighthouse?  Hold that thought and we'll come back to it after we go and see the rest of the Original Six.  It's also worth noting that when I went back to Fairport the next year, that it was a totally different vibe.  The lights were on inside the lighthouse and there were a ton of other people there.

After the lighthouse I walked around the town of Fairport for a bit and then had another beach lunch.  I left with the same lightheartedness that I'd felt the week before.

Lighthouse #3 Marblehead

Another weekend, another lighthouse!  By now I was a lighthouse pro.  It was also at this point that I started calling Lake Erie's lighthouses "tiny lighthouses".

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you may notice that Marblehead is the best looking lighthouse that we've seen so far.  And also that there are more people visiting than we've seen before.  Because of the crowds, there are organized tours every 15 minutes.  You buy your ticket, a guide tells you some of the history while you wait for your turn, and then the group gets to climb to the top where another guide is waiting to answer questions.

How much does this cost?  $3.  Pro tip, you are not going to go broke visiting Lake Erie's lighthouses.  Let's check it out!

 

But wait there's more!  When I got back down I walked around the base of the lighthouse and was amused to see a couple of red wing blackbirds hanging out.

And then I got The Shot.  One in every ten thousand pictures that I take looks like this.

Lighthouse #4 Lorain

 

The Lorain Lighthouse is the lighthouse that is not like the other lighthouses.  The only way to get there is by boat, and you have to reserve tickets in advance.  The price tag is higher, at $20 a pop which includes the boat ride.  The other thing about this visit was that it wasn't a solo trip. The Hubs was down to get in on the lighthouse action.

There have been a few accidents where ships have rammed into the lighthouse.  It's a little crooked.

Lighthouse #5 Huron Harbor

Huron is like Ashtabula, where you can't go in, you can only see it from a distance.  I wrapped up my visit fairly quickly, and headed to the last lighthouse on the list.

Lighthouse #6 Port Clinton

All sagas must come to an end and I reached the final lighthouse of my journey.  Fun fact, this style of lighthouse is called a "pepper pot".  It was only open for tours one day a week, and for the love of all that is holy I just wasn't able to make my wanderings line up with that one day in 2022.  But no worries, I finally got there in the summer of 2023.

Anytime that I come to an end of a trip, I'm always a little sad to finish...and also very eager to move on.  As the weeks went by, I started thinking of other local-ish places that I might like to go...such as Malabar Farm, that Fallingwater place that everyone kept telling me about, and oh snap I found out that there are islands in Lake Erie and that there was an island hopping cruise!  My weekends were suddenly very busy.

But wait there's more...a bonus lighthouse

Remember that "huh that sure looks like a lighthouse" building that I saw from the Fairport Lighthouse?  Yep, sure enough it is a lighthouse.  It took me a while to circle back, but it is the Fairport Harbor West lighthouse which can be reached from Mentor Headlands Beach State Park.

You can't go inside it for a very good reason...it's someone's home.  You can walk around it and out to the breakwater, but there is a fence and a lot of no trespassing signs to let you know to stay away from the lighthouse itself.

On the way out a Cedar Waxwing made a play to upstage the Red Wing Blackbird at Marblehead.

A visit to the park is worth it for the birds alone, and the lighthouse is a bonus.  If you have an extra 10 minutes on your hands and would like to hear how the lighthouse became someone's home, here is the story on that:

 

Thanks for letting me relive my lighthouse quest!