The biggest soft-serve ice cream cone I ever attempted to eat was at Brown’s Dairy Dock in Marblehead, Ohio. Not that I thought I could actually conquer this nearly foot-high swirling pillar of vanilla and chocolate delight, but I had to give it the old college try! Needless to say, the cone won—and I had plenty of melted ice cream all over my clothes to attest to the fact—but there are many more challenges to meet and sights to see in this area commonly referred to as “Ohio’s Vacationland”.

The quaint village of Marblehead, located along the shores of Lake Erie on the Marblehead Peninsula, provides a great starting point to explore the Lake Erie Islands area. Marblehead Lighthouse State Park, located along Ohio Route 163, is the best spot to take in the area’s rocky shoreline and view the picturesque Marblehead Lighthouse. The 77-foot high white-and-red beacon—which is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the state—first guided ships around this rugged coast in 1821. Today it is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the Great Lakes. Visitors can tour the interior of the structure and climb the circular staircase up to the outside viewing platform on weekday afternoons during the summer months. Adjacent is the Marblehead Lighthouse Keeper’s House, which serves as a maritime museum and welcome center. The locale offers spectacular views across the blue expanse of Lake Erie toward other popular attractions including Cedar Point Amusement Park, Kelleys Island, and South Bass Island.

Cedar Point Amusement Park is only a few miles across the water from Marblehead as the crow (or seagull) flies, but nearly an hour’s drive away as one must circle around the expansive Sandusky Bay. The 364-acre resort park, located in Sandusky on a narrow peninsula that juts into Lake Erie, is often called Ohio’s “Roller Coast”. Cedar Point is home to seventeen roller coasters—including some of the world’s highest and fastest—and is a destination of world renown among coaster enthusiasts. Various magazines and surveys rank it as one of the world’s best thrill parks year after year.

Kelleys Island Ferry Boat Line provides transportation from downtown Marblehead to Kelleys Island—the largest American island in Lake Erie—which sits about three miles off the coast. Visitors can rent golf carts or bicycles here, and take in such sites as Kelleys Mansion, Inscription Rock (a massive boulder covered with Native American pictographs), Kelleys Island State Park, and Glacial Grooves State Memorial. The latter consists of a series of 400-foot long striations in the island’s exposed limestone bedrock. It is considered to be one of the world's best-preserved examples of glacial scouring.

Put-In-Bay is the name of a Victorian-style resort village located on South Bass Island. The destination can be reached by ferry service either from downtown Port Clinton via the Jet Express, or from Catawba Point aboard the Miller Ferry. As at Kelleys Island, tourists can rent golf carts and bicycles, or hop aboard the Put-In-Bay Tour Train, which stops at various points of interest around the island.

The dominant structure on South Bass Island is the towering 352-foot high Greek Doric column called Perry’s Victory and International Peace Monument. An elevator takes visitors up more than three hundred feet to an outdoor observation deck near the top for a sweeping bird’s-eye-view of Lake Erie’s western basin. The national monument, which first opened in 1915, was built to commemorate the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. The last time we were atop the monument (it’s really windy at the top!), a park ranger told us that it was one of the clearest days he could recall in recent memory. Not only could we clearly see all of the Lake Erie Islands, but also mainland Canada and the skyline of downtown Detroit as well. The ranger even claimed he could see the Key Bank Tower in downtown Cleveland (60 miles away) through his binoculars. I wasn’t sure which little blip on the horizon he was pointing at though, as there were many blips in the distance!

For an interesting historic trip, plan a visit to tiny Johnson’s Island which boasts a well maintained Confederate soldiers’ cemetery at the former location of a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp. The island, which sits in Sandusky Bay, can be accessed via a causeway off Bay Shore Road in Marblehead.

Several public swimming beaches are scattered across the region, including sites in Port Clinton, East Harbor State Park, and Kelleys Island State Park. Keep in mind, however, that the waters of Lake Erie tend to be fairly cold, barely climbing into the mid 70s by late summer.