Peggy's Bed & Breakfast

Lake Erie Port

by yooperprof

Ashtabula, about 60 miles NE of Cleveland, is an important industrial port. Bulk coal from the mines of Ohio, West Virginia and western PA is carried out, iron ore pellets from the ranges in Minnesota and Michigan are brought in.

I drove up to Ashtabula one day from Wheeling WV, because I needed to see a big body of water, and Ashtabula was the closest place to access Lake Erie.

Lake Erie is not the smallest of the Great Lakes - Ontario is - but Erie is the shallowest, and it is generally considered to be the most polluted.

On the positive side, great strides have been taken in recent years to clean up Lake Erie, and I believe it is now possible to eat safely certain fish from the lake, provided that you are not a pregnant women, nor a growing child, and your immune system is in no way compromised.

There are public beaches in Ashtabula, but I wasn't sufficiently motivated to go in the water. (The sand seemed awfully dirty in Ashtabula, compared to what I was used to in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.)