A Day at Put-In-Bay with the Miller Boat Line.

So on Sat. we packed up the whole family and headed out to Put-in-Bay.



It was an absolutely perfect day for it.  Beautiful, fall weather.  I know people think of the islands and that whole Sandusky area of Lake Erie as a summer gig but it's beautiful in the fall:

Put-in-Bay is the town on South Bass Island on the western end of Lake Erie.  So to get there you need to take a ferry.  We used the Miller Boat Line and they were great.  They run daily out of Port Clinton - about an hour from our house in Cleveland.

The biggest thrill ever for a 2 year old obsessed with cars and trucks and things that go?  Taking our car on a boat:



Seriously it blew his little mind. CAR ON BOAT! CAR BOAT! BOAT!!!! Pretty awesome.  The ride over is about 20 min so we didn't stay in our car the whole time:

Although I did use the downtime to nurse the baby. In a car.  On a boat.

I have officially nursed this kid everywhere.

Although you don't have to take your car on a boat.  Actually the primary way people get around on the island is golf carts.  Which would have been super fun if not for the baby factor.  I just didn't know how that would work.  Plus we wanted to have our car with us to lug all of our gear - stroller, diaper bag, jammies for the trip home, picnic lunch, etc.  When the kids are older the golf carts will be a blast, though!

Once were were back on land we buckled the kids in and headed straight to the Perry's Cave Family Fun Center.

First on our list was the Butterfly House.

Or BOO-FLY house if you're talking to the 2 year old.  BOO FLY DON'T BOTHER ME!  His fav song.

Because my girl wanted to find an Azure Butterfly like in Fancy Nancy.  I wanted to get a picture of the two big kids where they didn't look like crazy people.  Only one of us accomplished our goal:

Guess which one.

Anyways it was really cool.

Tons of  BOOFLIES:

 And we even go to see to see the cocoons which was a big thrill:

From there it was on to Perry's Cave:

Put-in-Bay just had a huge celebration for the bicentennial of the Battle of Lake Erie and this cave was an important factor.  Apparently Perry's men hid out here waiting for the showdown with the British.  They were able to lay in wait because of the cave's fresh water source. The pool of water is safe to drink b/c the limestone in the cave filters it.  The level of the pool rises and falls with the level of Lake Erie - something I find fascinating.  Anyways with out this cave the battle and therefore the War of 1812 and therefore all of flipping history might have gone very differently:

A very important body of water.

As a former preservationist I love sites like this - that have been tourist attractions for literally over a hundred years.  Because some of the things - actually alot of the things - that early tourists did can be really harmful to the thing they were touring.  So then that becomes part of the history of the site, too.  In this case there were black soot marks from the gas lanterns they used to use.  But my fav part was the remaining parts of an old pipeline that used to run from the freshwater pool to the Liberty Hotel. Yeah someone saw this cool, historically significant cave and thought:  "Sweet.  We'll just go ahead and take that water.  Damage it?  Bah.  Our needs are way more important.  What up."
Kindof like how the southwest looks at our great lakes....  Wait.

Anyways! After the tour the kids needed to run around for a bit.  So we headed to the Fort A-maze-ing.

Which is basically just a huge maze.  The kids loved it.

I got several turns in and had a crying baby in my hands that needed to eat RIGHT NOW OMG.  I... couldn't find the way out.

But with not to much trouble (and alot of mocking) Matt was able to navigate me back to the entrance. 

From there we left the Family Fun Center and headed across the street to Crystal Cave.  Which is the world's largest geode.  My kids LOVE geodes - my mom collects them kindof so they've seen a few in their lives.  Once they understood what they were seeing it blew their minds.

We skipped the winery portion of the Crystal Cave tour, sadly b/c the kids were in dire need of some downtime (read:  AWFUL).  So we took a driving tour of the island:

When everyone seemed back to rights again we had a bit more time to kill before the ferry home but not enough for another attraction.  So we went to the park:

Always a strong play.

And climbed some cannons:

 And got ice cream:

Perfect end to a lovely day.

The ferry home was pretty fun, too!

We had a great time in Put-in-Bay.  Which you can probably tell just by the fact that this turned into about the longest post ever.  And we still didn't see all of the things we wanted to see!  Matt's super bummed about missing the Longest Bar in the World (yes. that's a thing), and I want to go to the top of Perry's Victory.  So we will be returning to the island again soon.

I'd highly recommend a trip if you're looking for something fun and easy to do with your family this fall!

Disclosure:  Miller Boat Line provided me with tickets to the island and the Perry's Cave Family Fun Center attractions.  All opinions are my own.