A Refreshing Dip and Cakes with Canoes
by Denise Janus

This morning we packed up and moved to camp out on the beach in Fairport, near the Fairport Lighthouse Museum, www.ncweb.com/org/fhlh/. Then we drove back to the Chagrin River to canoe another 13 miles.  The heat was pretty intense, so about 9 miles into our day we all jumped ship and went swimming, leaving just Dr. Vogt in the canoe. People on the shore must have thought we were crazy. This is the first time we all just jumped into the water, and we were delighted to find out that it wasn’t hard to get back into the canoe!

We climbed back in after a few minutes in the refreshing lake and finished the rest of our miles.  A lady on a jet ski came by and said she had seen us in the paper and thought it was a really cool trip. We ended up canoeing right to the beach in Fairport where we would camp that night. There were people swimming at the beach, so when the lifeguard saw us he got on his bullhorn and told us where to pull the canoe out. We laughed because we were thinking “Well, so much for not drawing attention to ourselves.”

After getting the canoe out of the water we all played beach volleyball and had lunch.  Reporters from the News-Herald came out to talk to us around our picnic table, so we’ll look for that article tomorrow!  A little bit after 5pm we met John Ollila at the Fairport Lighthouse Museum for a tour. We’d like to thank Mr. Ollila and his crew for all their hospitality at the Museum and the Public Library where we made a 7 p.m. presentation.  They took a lot of time to prepare a ton of delicious food for us – the cakes even had little canoes and voyageurs on them!  We really appreciate them making sure we were full!