South Bass Island

On the ferry to the island
see all photos »

After a bit of a late start this morning (we’d wanted to get on the road by 8am, but our tired bodies wouldn’t let us), we made our way to the Lake Erie Islands. After spending the day biking around the island, we hopped back in the car towards Indiana Sand Dunes something or other.

WalMart

En route, we made a quick stop at the store everyone loves to hate (aka Wal Mart) to get some of that chalk you use to decorate your car windows and had fun decorating the Vibe. Oh, in case anyone was wondering, the Vibe has a name – Ms. Bonita Valentine, aka Bonnie. So now Bonnie has some nice new decorations (you can see the pictures).

South Bass Island

We got to Catawba, OH around 1pm. As an amusing side note…when we were at Walmart we had attempted to return a Belkin FM transmitter we’d purchased a few days before so we could listen to our iPod on the radio. However, the Nano didn’t quite fit in the slot so it wasn’t really stable. Because we didn’t have the receipt or box they wouldn’t let us return it. As we were leaving parking lot, we heard a noise on the roof of the car but didn’t see anything outside on the ground so we ignored it. About halfway to Catawba, we realized that the noise we heard was the FM transmitter on top of the car where Josh had put it while we were decorating Bonnie. We were bummed but it wasn’t a huge deal. However, when we arrived at the ferry, we looked up at the roof of the car, and low and behold, the FM transmitter was still up there, hanging on for dear life. The parking dude at the ferry was just as shocked as we were. Weird but cool.

So we hopped on the ferry with our bikes to South Bass Island, home of the Worlds Longest Bar, the Chocolate Museum, and the best lobster bisque either of us have ever had. Seriously, it had HUGE chunks of lobster in it, and we also orderd some bread covered with shrimp and cheese. The mango martini Dove had wasn’t too bad either. We stopped in for a drink at the Worlds Longest Bar after, but they didn’t’ have anything on tap, or bottles – only 16oz cans, so we had a quick vodka and soda and hopped back on our bikes.

The biggest disappointment of the day was that there was a winery on the island which we planned on hitting up, but over lunch were speaking with another couple who highly suggested we skip it, because it wasn’t’ anything like the wineries in NY, but rather just a tour and then you buy a glass of sweet, not so tasty wine. But the bike ride was excellent and the town of Put-In-Bay on the island was really cute and apparently a big party destination on weekends. We can attest to this as when we got off the ferry back on the mainland, there was a huge line of cars waiting to get on. Most of the people in the cars were actually standing outside of their cars drinking beers while they waited.

As another aside, somewhere in Indiana we finished “reading” The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. We stopped at the library before we left Rochester and picked up about 24 books on CD. This was our first – fun! Dove read it when she was in high school but both thought it’d be a great road trip book. Next is The World According to Garp, by John Irving.