Cleveland (6/21/2015)

Today we ventured into the big city of Cleveland, and on the way we saw a deer, the first one we've seen in a while.  Our first stop was at Ronald McDonald House, then Cleveland Clinic to visit our Arizona friends Nicki and Doris Paulik.  They were glad to see some Arizona faces.  The Ronald McDonald House is a beautiful facility, run by volunteers.  Doris and Nicki have stayed there many times, and it has been a Godsend for them.

Doris came over from the hospital to meet us and lead us over to Nicki's room.  Nicki's roommate was asleep, so Doris brought her out into the waiting room to visit with us, along with her IV pole.

Before we left the hospital, Doris took us up to the rooftop to see the view of downtown Cleveland from here.  The clinic was state-of-the-art, and even the rooftop was a nice place to get outside for a few minutes.

Doris walked us back to our cars, and I saw this Ronald McDonald House guitar at the bus stop.   I saw a few other guitars scattered around the city.

We had intended to take a trolly tour next, but by the time we found lunch and the trolley area, it was too late to get the 1:00 tour.  So we will try that again tomorrow.  Our lunch was at the oldest Irish pub in Cleveland, just pure chance that we stopped here.

So instead of the trolley tour, we went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.  Collins and David opted out of this tour and headed back to camp.  This was an impressive-looking building, pyramid-shaped, right on the banks of Lake Erie.  Apparently, the local disc jockeys were instrumental in Cleveland's rise to fame as the birthplace of rock and roll.

This was my kind of museum, so I was in charge of the camera here, and I took plenty of pictures.  Right inside the building were several cars in various poses, including hanging from the ceiling.  One of the more colorful ones was Janis Joplin's Porsche.

This was a great museum.  There were recordings playing all the time, and lots of places where you could select a singer, a song, and put on earphones to hear your selection.

The first exhibit, which was clips of performers, was the Inductees for the class of 2015.  Since my music taste is stuck in the 50s and 60s, many of these performers were unfamiliar to me, and it is a huge class.

 There were lots of exhibits, posters, window cases depicting a single singer or band, and film videos of important starts like Elvis, the Beatles, etc.  There was also a Dick Clark American Bandstand show with real short clips of performances during the years of that show.

Lots of costumes on display.  Remember back inn our day, performers "dressed up" for the stage.

Then I got to the good stuff -- the Elvis area!  The video of Elvis, of course, captured my attention for a while.  Also on display was one of his motorcycles -- a 3-wheeler.

The video covered his performing years.  He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.

And photos, of course, even one in his Army uniform.

And one of his guitars.

And his costumes

There was another area about the Beatles, you know, those other rock & rollers who were sort of famous.

More photos from inside.

The top floor had famous pictures of the artists, many were magazine covers.  A very interesting one of Cher.

 And Prince.  I actually thought this picture was awesome, although I never was a Prince fan.

 Paul McCartney

More guitars

We finally regrouped and took our leave of this place, but we all thought it was worth the time and money we spent ($17 each).

Joe, of course, decided to take a scenic route home.  He wanted to find a road that followed the Lake Erie coastline, which he did.  He found a couple of parks that we could pull into, and we got out and soaked up some of the Ohio sunshine (rare) and the beauty of this Great Lake.

We have seen these flowers a few times, don't know what they are but they are lovely.


We came across one of Mazie's loves, a totem pole.

And a beautiful "Boulevard of 500 Flags," which is a war memorial.  Joe had to turn the car around and go back to this because he didn't see it in time to turn in.  But no problem, we turn around a lot, sometimes because we are lost, sometimes because we missed something, sometimes because he/we changed our minds.  But that saying "All those who wander are not lost" certainly applies to us.

And one more stop along the lake.

We finally headed back to camp, but somewhere missed a turn and all of a sudden Marilyn realized the sun was on the wrong side of the car.  So I checked the map (I had finally put it down because I thought we knew the way home), and sure enough, we were headed to Pennsylvania.  I think we were about 20 miles from the state line, and my o my, would that have been a shock if we came upon that state line sign!  But no problem, we took the next intersection, finally plugged the address of the campground back into Lucille, and drove right on home.  The fact that it was 7:45 p.m. was beside the point.

We stopped at the camp office and added another day to our stay here, then went to our separate campers and grabbed a bite of supper.  A long day, but a good one.

Moving on to Cleveland (6/19/2015)

Saturday was moving day again, but it was a short trip.  We woke up to rain, again, so we didn't get in any hurry to go outside and start the de-camping process.  Joe had decided last night that we would run up the highway to McDonalds for breakfast this morning, so I had already put away the toaster and coffee pot.  We ran out between raindrops and by the time we got back it was just drizzling, so we put on our rain jackets and got busy.  We were actually on the road just before 9:00, and we headed up the road through Kent (where the infamous Kent State is) and Aurora on Highway 43, then we cut over on 82 to 44, which took us into our campground.  It was a nice drive, past lots of beautiful homes, pretty lakes (lots of geese around here).  

We arrived at Punderson State Park, near Newbury, about 10:15, and started the check-in process.  We messed around for about an hour picking out our campsites, then going back and getting registered, then getting set up.  The strange thing here, which we didn't think to ask in advance, is that they only have 20 amp electricity.  We usually have 30 amp, and oftentimes we have 50 amp, so we weren't sure how that was going to work for us.  We paid for 2 nights here and thought if we could keep our units cool enough, we would probably need another night or so.  We should be able to run one air conditioner, as long as we don't try to use power for any other heavy-duty thing (like the microwave or hair dryer) at the same time.

We decided to take the rest of the day off, so after a quick lunch, we all settled in, took naps or read. It had quit raining, and there were lots of people moving around in this park, taking kids to the playground, starting campfires, setting up tents.  It's a busy place on a weekend.

Joe and I finally took a little walk around the campground and encountered Collins who was making his hike.  We didn't try to keep up.  We did take a few pictures down by the campground office of the lake and a house across the lake.  I guess if I had to live here, I could make it in that house.  It looks like it has a basement, so that would work.  I told Joe if I lived back here, I would want a finished basement and I would put my bedroom down there so I didn't have to worry about moving to the basement during the night when the tornado warnings were out.

You can see it's just a short walk to water's edge.

Marilyn offered to make enchalidas for dinner, so I whipped up some refried beans and Mazie made an apricot crumble, and we had our first group dinner of the trip.  Yummy!  We talked about plans for tomorrow's drive into Cleveland, then went our separate ways for the evening. 

Hartville, Ohio (6/19/2015)

We survived last night's storms with no big problems.  David had left the windows down on their car when he went up to the laundry, and he got soaked when he ran out to roll them up, and the car seats got pretty wet before he got them up since the rain came down very quickly and very hard.  But otherwise, we all fared well, and I don't think it stormed any more after we had gone to bed.  We did see some trees down in town this morning that were being cleaned up.

We had an easier day today.  Dave and Mazie had to move from their campsite just across the road, because their spot was reserved for tonight.  But they got that done first thing, so that was no big deal.

We first went into Hartville to the big Flea Market.  There were tables set up outside (they got a late start because of last night's rain), and inside was basically new merchandise and food -- baked items, meats and cheeses, jellies, jams, honey, etc. and some antiques upstairs.  There was one area of furniture which we assumed to be Amish-made.  We picked up a couple of things outside, and then hit the produce row outside before we left where we restocked on fresh fruit and vegetables.

 From there, we drove across the parking lot to the Amish restaurant, which was another huge building, also with a bakery, meat shop, gift shop.  It wasn't a typical Amish place though, the food was served restaurant-style rather than family-style, and a lot of the merchandise seemed to me to be what you see at other gift shops. They did have a piece of art on the wall that Mazie and I liked.  She does some painting, so she thinks we could do one like this.

Next door to this building was the huge hardware store we had heard about, so we, of course, had to walk through it.  And it was large (over 6 acres under roof).  In addition to normal hardware and building supplies, there were model rooms (kitchen, laundry room, bathroom, bedroom, etc.) for you to walk through for ideas. 

We headed back to camp about 2:30, but the guys made a detour down to the hangar for the Goodyear blimp.  Inside the hangar there, they are building a new blimp.  They got to see them untether the blimp, take-off, circle the area, and land it -- they did that 3 times while they were there.  They assumed they were doing some pilot training.  Joe took some pictures on his cell phone, but we haven't gotten them downloaded yet.  We had seen two blimps in the air our first night here when we went back to town to eat dinner.

Eventually, we all made it home.  Joe did a little maintenance on the car and RV, getting ready to move on tomorrow.  Then we started looking for our next campground.  Mazie came over, and eventually Collins and Marilyn came down, and we finally decided on a state park just east of Cleveland.  Since it's the weekend, some of the places Collins had called were already full, but the state park said they had availability, so we had a plan.

After we all had our separate dinners, we played cards for a while.  Mazie came over to watch (and keep score), but David decided to stay home with the dog.  The weather was nice all day, cloudy and relatively cool, but no rain.  So we are off to Cleveland tomorrow.