With heat advisories looming, we set off on our summer road trip. A stop, first, in Erie, Pennsylvania: a ride on a paddlewheel boat across the bay. A visit to Presque Isle, a skinny peninsula sheltering the bay from the waves of the great lake. Temperatures rose as we attempted a hike to the tip of the isle. On the sweltering sand, birders flocked to see a very lost, presumably very hot, ptarmigan. Tiny toads hopped across the beach from lakeshore nursery to inland pond.

We waded into Erie, the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and then headed toward another gift of the glaciers, the long, thin Finger Lakes.