Vermilion, a Beautiful Port Town
by Denise Janus

Yesterday we took the rest of the day to relax and enjoy the sun.  We had another visit from the raccoons who strewed our trash everywhere. At 8 a.m. we started packing to move to the Great Lakes Historical Society / Inland Seas Maritime Museum in Vermilion. The staff is graciously letting us camp on their grounds for two nights, and we're making a presentation there at 7 p.m. tonight.  Today we’ll put back in at Cranberry Creek and finish the 7 miles to Vermilion. 

We drove over to the Maritime Museum which is right on Lake Erie and met the curator, Ann Michaels and her son, Tom, who were so gracious and hospitable.   They let us set up camp outside on the Museum’s lawn. Our tents are like beach houses; when you walk out of the tent you are about 20 feet from Lake Erie!  We grabbed a bite to eat and drove back to the Cranberry Creek boat ramp and hit the water at about noon.  This is how it is for most of our days; we set up camp then sometimes backtrack to boat ramps to canoe up to where we’re camping. 

The water was like a sheet of glass when we started, but then the wind picked up and it got a bit choppy.  It’s ok that this slowed us down though, because we had gotten ahead of schedule and we had until 4 p.m. to make it to the Port of Vermilion. We entered Vermilion Lagoons at 3:45 p.m. - perfect timing - and were greeted by photographers and reporters!  The Port of Vermilion and the city are beautiful! You can see and learn more at www.vermilion.net.  After satisfying the media and some locals who seem to gather around our canoe wherever we go, we took out of the water and had a few hours to get ready for our 7 p.m. presentation at the Maritime Museum, which you can learn more about at http://www.inlandseas.org/.  See that lighthouse on the homepage? We pitched our tents at the foot of it!  

Our presentation was really well received at the Museum, and now we must get ready for another day of canoeing from Vermilion to Lorain.  Laura’s boyfriend Larry  came down to canoe with us on Saturday and Sunday. He put in a lot of work on the canoe in the construction process so he’s always welcome to camp!