Saying Good-Bye to the Lake Erie Islands

Other than leaving our two boys behind in Michigan, one of the hardest things about leaving our typical western Lake Erie cruising grounds is going to be not being able to spend time at the Lake Erie Islands. For the past several years we’ve spent as many weekends as possible (starting in May and usually ending in October) enjoying South, Middle and North Bass islands, so we knew that before heading east and south we had to spend one more weekend saying good-bye!

We left our marina on Friday morning (nope…we’re not superstitious!) and headed to the mooring balls on South Bass Island, home to Put In Bay, also more affectionately known as simply “the bay”. We had a list of places we wanted to return to “one last time”, so we started out on Friday night by hitting The Reel Bar and catching the Ray Fogg show. We’ve been pretty regular Ray Fogg followers over the years and he noticed us and used us for one of his jokes. He told the crowd we were leaving on our boat for the Bahamas…as soon as we could tear ourselves away from the island we’d been trying to leave for the past three months! It’s true…we do have a hard time leaving Put in Bay.

Saturday we were lucky enough to have two different sets of friends head out to the island and we so enjoyed spending time with all of them! High on our list of must-dos (in addition to visiting with friends!) was getting lobster bisque at The Boardwalk. Not sure why they are famous for their lobster bisque out in the middle of Lake Erie, where as far as I know there are no lobster, but boy is it good! Spent the rest of the afternoon at Mojito Bay and The Round House and then found ourselves back at The Reel Bar for one more last Ray Fogg show, where we were gifted with shots from his “filthy little oar”! A weekend at PIB wouldn’t be complete without an evening dancing to some great country music at T&Js Smokehouse. So fun! Almost forgot…ended the evening with some very late night Cameo Pizza before hitting the sack.

Sunday Funday! Breakfast at the Frosty Bar, Heineman’s Winery with the laptop to get some work done (nothing like making a litttle extra money while drinking a little wine!), Mike “Mad Dog” Adams at the Round House in the late afternoon and dinner at The Keys before heading to Mr. Ed’s where Michael Ray (with the hit song “Kiss You in the Morning”) was performing for a small, intimate crowd! So very cool! Last, but certainly not least, a stop at the Beer Barrel to catch Mustang Sally, one of our long-time favorite bands and back to the Round House for the Killer Flamingos, another favorite! Somewhere in between all of this fun we managed to take the dinghy to Middle Bass Island and spend some quiet time with friends at their island house. Sadly, we did not make it to North Bass, the quiet and secluded island that we love so much! It is there that I have celebrated many birthdays with a picnic lunch in the vineyards, something I look forward to every year. I now wonder where we will be for our birthdays this year!

Monday morning rolled around all too quickly and now it was time to really say good-bye! We had visited many of our favorite spots, seen most of our favorite island entertainers, visited with friends and said good-bye to all of The Boardwalk mooring ball taxi drivers that we’ve come to know and love over the years. Just can’t bring ourselves to say good-bye, so, til we see you again our beloved Lake Erie Islands!