Sandussssskkkyyyyy Bayyyy!

After riding for several hours on highways, and then on roads through marshy settings interrupted by cabins and trailer parks, a passing the enticing sign for the Blue Hole in Castalia, and the somewhat mysterious billboard for Sorrowing Mother Shrine, our hot and cranky spirits were lifted when my Dad marked our arrival at the white Edison Bridge. “Sandusssskkkyyy Bayyy!” As we rose over the quiet waters of the bay, we knew that our week at heaven was close at hand. 

My quiet, intellectual father shouted about Sandusky Bay each summer as we crossed the Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Bridge, and my sister and I always echoed his exclamation. The Bridge carries Ohio Route 2 and Route 269 across Sandusky Bay and was the only way to get to a peninsula in Northwestern Ohio. Once a year, my parents packed the car for our family trip to Ohio’s vacationland area, where we spent a week at “Lakeside on Lake Erie.”

Soon we would be settled at a quaint, Victorian-era cottage, ready to go to the dock to swim, to the park to play miniature golf and meet friends on the playground, to the little shops for ice cream and candy and to entertaining programs each evening. Our parents had more time to help us fly balsam airplanes, to go for walks or bicycle rides, and maybe they would even play a game of shuffleboard. Oh, the joy of hearing my Dad shout that we were crossing Sandusky Bay!

But the week at Lakeside passed so fast, and before I knew it the elation and thrill of crossing the bridge to Lakeside was replaced by the melancholy emptiness of driving across the bridge to leave and go back home. “We’ll be back year,” my Dad would say.

 

And we did come back. And then I came back with my kids and shouted “Sandusssskkkkyyy Bayyy!” with them as we crossed the Edison Bridge. And now, we have a house on Sandusky Bay and we gather with our grown-up kids and go out on the boat, or watch them jet-ski, and we enjoy perch dinners and porch sunsets.

One Sunday night, after the weekend crowds had left, a neighbor paused to talk with me as he walked his dog. “Ah, I love the peace and quiet on Sunday night after all the tourists have left,” he said.

“I know what you mean. They are the ones who have to be sad about going home.” We watched a cruiser head in to the nearby marina.

“You know,” he said, “for years my family and I cried every time we left the peninsula and headed over the bridge back home. Then one summer, we decided ‘enough’! And that’s when we built our house here. And we never had to be sad again about leaving and crossing the bridge.”

And now it’s September. The summer season is fading, and the vacation activities are winding down on Sandusky Bay, and that’s enough to make me sad. Soon, my husband and I will spend more time at our primary house, and only come up to the peninsula to check the summer place. I will have to cross the bridge and leave, but like my Dad always said, “We’ll be back next year.”

I hope you have memories, too, of wonderful places that are hard to leave.

Want to read more about Lakeside? Here and Here will let you see more about the beauty and fun of lakeside and why I think it’s heaven!