Experience the best of Kelleys Island

Kelleys Island lies in western Lake Erie, a few kilometres off the Marblehead peninsula in northern Ohio, and is reached by ferry. Most of its land is farmland, woods and old limestone quarries, and a small village on the south shore has a harbour, a main street and a handful of shops. Golf carts and bicycles are the usual way around.

The Glacial Grooves State Memorial preserves long, deep grooves scoured into limestone by an ice sheet about 18,000 years ago, and Inscription Rock carries Native American carvings of animals and people. Kelleys Island State Park has a beach and trails, and North Pond is a nature preserve of marsh and sand. Put-in-Bay and the other Lake Erie islands lie nearby, and migrating birds crowd the shore in spring.

Lake perch and walleye are fried at the village restaurants, and in the nineteenth century the island was a centre of limestone quarrying and winemaking, which old stone buildings still recall. Summer is the season, with warm water and long evenings, and the island is quiet in winter.