You enter the harbor mouth at Erie and discover you are on a large lake with the city and various marinas to port. The lake water was a brownish green and if you looked over the transom you couldn't see much of our rudder under water because of the lack of water clarity. It was neat to pass the monument where Commodores Perry's squadron was built during the war of 1812. To get into the marina we stayed at we actually had to pass under the pedestrian walkway of the Sheraton Hotel. It always looks like the mast is going to hit the top of any bridge you go under - so we held our breath as we cleared through. There were some work boats tied up in the marina with no one aboard but only 2 other pleasure boats. We shared a very large empty dock with one of these boats. The water in the harbor was green, slimy, and smelly. We tied up and locked the boat. We went into downtown Erie at about 5pm and there were hardly any people around. Lots of the stores were closed - and we mean forever. The city was preparing for Erie days - but it was surprisingly empty of people. After dinner at a restaurant with terrible service (it wouldn't last a month in Chicago!) we returned to our boat. The harbor had two chain-link perimeter fences. In order to get to or leave our boat we had to use a key to open a creaking gate - it sounded like something from a crypt. Our boat was right near one of the fences and after it was dark we had a sorted variety of odd people standing by the fence and looking at us. Merry announced that she was going to the marina building to do laundry and Wiley objected noting that it was beyond the defensive perimeter. Wiley claimed that the individuals standing by the fence staring at us were Zombies: the "undead" looking to feast upon our flesh - ignoring this acute observation Merry said she would be fine because there was no one around the marina building - just then a rather odd middle aged man appeared precisely there and Merry said, "Oh, except for that one weird guy." The result was that Wiley provided an escort service and stood there while she did the laundry. The "undead" never appeared in sufficient numbers to push the chain link fence down so the night ended happily. We left early in the morning to fuel at Perry's Landing Marina and rather than stay a second night in Erie got on our way to Dunkirk, NY.