Pennsylvania - Day 16 - Presque Isle

Erie KOA, PA

Monday, 16 April 2018

When I checked in yesterday, they told me I was lucky I’d come from Pittsburgh because people who were supposed to come from Buffalo were delayed by an ice storm along the road. Buffalo’s about an hour NE of here. We didn’t get an ice storm here, but the temperature today started out at 41° and has gone down to 34° as the day’s gone on. And the weather report says the wind chill’s gotten down to 24° now by 5:30.

So of course I decided to spend the day out-of-doors and go to Presque Isle State Park. A young woman at the grocery store told me it was the thing she liked best about living in Erie; “we’re lucky to have it,” she said. And I can see she’s right.

I cribbed this photo because it's so illustrative

It’s this odd little peninsula that juts up into Lake Erie, but unusually it curves around so it almost touches land again at the other end. Apparently it used to, and the wind blowing across Lake Erie keeps shifting the sand around. Since the 1840s, the Army Corps of Engineers has been experimenting with different ways to stabilize it, and only about 20 years ago have they found a method they think might work – as much as that’s possible.

At the entrance to the state park is the Tom Ridge Environmental Center. I hadn’t intended to stop there because the only thing I’d heard about it is that it’s a Green building, which is good but not an attraction to me. However, after I’d spent a couple hours driving all the way to the end and back and stopping to look at the birds and Presque Isle Bay and Lake Erie, I was curious and thought I’d see if there was anybody who could tell me about the Isle.

What I found is a wonderful exhibit about the formation (dating back to the last Ice Age) and the continuing re-formation and the wildlife and plant life and all sorts of things. And, by the way, a pretty neat building with innovative building materials and techniques.

On Presque Isle is a memorial to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, who built his fleet of US warships here in the bay during the 1814-1815 winter. Can you imagine building ships during an Erie winter? They were so low on building materials they used wooden nails. The fleet was needed because the US was fighting England in the War of 1812, which mostly started over the British habit of raiding US ships at sea and conscripting our sailors for their boats.

They weren’t just on the Atlantic but also patrolling the Great Lakes, which they justified by their territory in Canada. Perry won the Congressional Medal for an incredible display of bravery and tactics that fooled the British into believing US might was vastly superior to what it really was. He’s the one with the motto “Don’t Give Up The Ship,” which was on his flag flown on each ship he was on. He’s also the one who notified his superiors, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” And they were, too.  It was the first time in history an entire British naval squadron surrendered (per Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/Oliver-Hazard-Perry

The white specks are Egrets, the dark things in the water are
Scaup and Merganser, and Erie is in the background.

Presque Isle Bay was full of seabirds. I saw thousands of Scaup, easily 100 Bufflehead (meaning there were many more than that), dozens of Red-breasted Mergansers, several Great Egrets in a little bay off the Bay, even a Shoveler. And the weather was fit only for the birds. I walked the dogs at the Perry Memorial and couldn’t believe how rotten it was, being so cold and windy. Surprisingly, there were quite a few very hardy people walking along the pedestrian path.

Presque Isle Lighthouse

On the Lake Erie side is the Presque Isle Lighthouse, designated a national historic landmark, built in 1872, and apparently very needed because an exhibit at the enviro. center said there are a lot of wrecks in the lake. Also all along the Lake Erie side are beaches, with real sand, and I imagine the joint is jumpin’ in the summer. Not so much today. Presque Isle is called “Pennsylvania’s only seashore.”

Lake Erie beach with breakwater

Lake Erie - note the whitecaps

I’d intended to poke around town some and visit the Erie Maritime Museum and the Erie Playhouse (the 3rd oldest community theater in the US), and see the 19th century Victorian mansions on Millionaire’s Row, and see the lighthouse in Erie (because only one lighthouse apparently wasn’t enough to prevent wrecks). But with the weather so crummy, and with all the time I’d spent in the state park and enviro. center, I decided to get groceries and go back to the campground.