Vermillion Lighthouse - Vermillion, Ohio
The lighthouses on this side of Lake Erie are not the grand structures that I'm used to seeing on the East Coast, but they, nevertheless, were quite necessary in the days before satellite aided navigation.
The Great Lakes hold an estimated six to eight thousand shipwrecks with estimated loss of life totalling about thirty thousand mariners.
Approximately two thousand of those wrecks lie at the bottom of Lake Erie. Of those two thousand wrecks, identified through record searches and historical reports, a little less than four hundred have been located and mapped.
The two thousand ships lost in Lake Erie represent one of the highest concentrations of shipwrecks in the world.
Though the lighthouses around Lake Erie no longer serve as the primary method to aide sailors' safe navigation, they do serve as a tangible reminder that the forces of nature are always powerful and sometimes unforgiving.
Today, the news is full of reports of the impact that powerful thunderstorms with some tornadoes in the midwest, in general, and Ohio in particular that occured recently in the region.
Thus far, the only consequence visited on the pilgrimage has been about a half hour spent in the mailbox area of a mobile home park with a handy overhang during a relatively brisk rain. We remain vigilant, but rumors of impending disaster remain greatly exaggerated in the small and slowly moving diameter of our advance.
While we're not walking for any particular cause, the American Red Cross is an organization that is always present to offer support to people impacted by all manner of trouble.
If this walk has proven anything to me, it's that in spite of our many apparent differences, we're all in this together, for good or for ill. Helping your neighbor, even if they live in another state, or are just passing through, is always a good thing to do.
I know we've benefited from the generosity of those helping us from the very first day that we started.
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