Lake Erie islands: Sun and booze or relaxed get-a-way

Josh Noel/Chicago Tribune

Four men in their 20s wobbled down this island's main drag on a Tuesday afternoon with red buckets on their heads. An hour earlier the buckets were full of beer. Now drained, they made convenient, if curious, headgear as the men slithered into another bar, their fourth of the afternoon.

"Huh," mused Will Fitten, 52, visiting from Columbus. "They must be doing that because it was just raining."

"No," said Teri Truss, his girlfriend of three years. "That's not why."

"Is it because they're idiots?" Fitten said.

"Yup."

Behavior of that sort runs high in the South Bass Island village planted in Lake Erie: red bucket hats, boozy young people breaking off cartwheels in the park and fist-pumping sing-a-longs to yesteryear's radio hits. But, hey, sometimes you just need to walk down the street with a bucket on your head. Fitten certainly didn't mind.

"It's all just having fun," he said. "You're supposed to do that on an island vacation."

Yet 5 miles east, on Lake Erie's other major island escape, Kelleys Island, the charms are more subtle: beach lounging, hiking and biking, marveling at deep glacial grooves left in limestone and searching for an abandoned stone winery in the woods. There are just a few bars, and between them, a winery and a tiny brewery, there also is opportunity for night life. It's just a calmer night life.

Nearly 20 small islands are clustered in this scenic area of walleye-rich western Lake Erie, but at the heart of the action are South Bass (the party island, which is home to Put-in-Bay) and Kelleys (the quieter one). They have plenty in common: virtually no chain businesses, lovely, rocky cliffs perched above Lake Erie and a year-round population in the hundreds that explodes during the gentle Midwestern summer. But they also present uniquely different destinations, barely recognizable as the geographical brothers they are.

"They're more like stepbrothers, maybe," said Kathy Kennedy, 42, of Gurnee, Ill., who is living temporarily in the Netherlands. She is a veteran of both islands who stayed a recent weekend on Kelleys with her husband and two children. She spent a chunk of her 20s on South Bass but now favors Kelleys. "As a mother, if I went back to Put-in-Bay, I'd have to make sure my children were off the island by a certain time."

Find out more about the two islands and the different personalities they exude.

Kelleys Island

While you need to make an effort to flee the party on South Bass, on Kelleys you need to make an effort to find it. Here it feels more as if you're joining something -- a community, a mind-set, an intersection of life and character that already was and will continue to be after you leave. South Bass is largely transients, a bunch of Ohio mainlanders who weren't there Wednesday and won't be there Monday.

South Bass Island

To many visitors, South Bass Island is about two things: golf carts and partying. The golf carts are everywhere. They swarm the downtown like flies. People rent them to traverse the island's 4-mile length and mile-and-a-quarter width. Cops have golf carts that flash red and blue, and pizza places use golf carts to deliver their pies. A dozen places rent them, usually for $50 a day.

How to decide and what to do once you get there

Though the islands are similar in some respects and different in arguably many more, most people seem to identify with one or the other. Either you love South Bass because there are many more bars and restaurants, shopping and live bands, or you prefer Kelleys because it has less of all that and more nature in which to stretch your legs. You can't help feeling more at home at one or the other, depending on your interests.