I woke up at 5am and took my shower. I woke Jada up around 5:20am, and Ellen was waking up. Phoebe was the last, and they all got dressed. We got all of our things together, and I took it out to the car to pack up. The warm breakfast this morning was biscuits and gravy and bacon, so we all skipped that. Light breakfasts are better for a day in the car. When I was turning the keys in at the front desk, the person there asked me about my stay. I complained about the strong smell of cigarette smoke in the elevator and our hallway. It was then that I found out they still have 5 smoking rooms on the 3rd floor. I didn’t even think to ask because what’s the point of having a non-smoking room if the floor has smoking rooms. It’s not like smoke stays where you want it to stay. So, I’ll have to remember to ask that at the rest of our hotel rooms and make sure that we’re not on a floor that has smoking rooms as well.
We were on the road by 6:40am. Traffic wasn’t bad until we hit closer to the Chicago Loop. Once we were past that, though, it was smooth sailing again. It only took us about 90 minutes to get through the city. The girls were listening to the second Harry Potter book on CD, so they didn’t care how long it took, or how slowly we were driving. We were on toll roads all day long. We ended up paying $21.65 in just tolls through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. We also had our next time change in there somewhere, though I didn’t see a sign for it.
We arrived at my friend Deanne’s house around 3:30pm EST. She showed us around the house and gave us a couple options of where to sleep. Her daughters weren’t home yet, but they all went to get them. The girls all got along immediately. We ate a yummy dinner, and then we went out to the Metro Parks Bridal Vale falls. The water was really low in the river, so the girls were all able to hike up the river a little ways. The shale in the river bed was really interesting in color and shape. The kids had a great time just walking in the shallow water. When we got home, we put our kids to bed down with us promising that if they did a good job, they’d get to sleep up in Deanne’s girls room for our last night in town. They were quite a bit over tired by the time we got them to bed, but they seemed to fall asleep pretty quickly. The adults stayed up watching the replay of the Tour coverage before turning in.
July 8, 2010: Cleveland, OH
I was awake at 6am, and I tried to be as quiet as possible taking my shower. By the time I had come back down, the girls were both awake at 6:30am. I had them come up and eat some light breakfast. They played quietly downstairs until the other girls were awake around 7:45am. I started making breakfast when Jada got up. I made a big mess of eggs with asparagus and some of the left over chicken sausage from the dinner the night before. Jada made our pancakes. The girls were really slow to eat. Ellen, especially, was slow to finish her eggs even though she usually finishes them really fast. She didn’t even want many eggs. She was a bit on the blah side all day. We all got ready and headed to downtown Cleveland with Deanne and her girls. Her husband had to work. We were hoping to see the tall ships that were in on Lake Erie, but when we got there, they weren’t allowing people to just walk along the ships this year. So, we turned our steps towards the Great Lakes Science Center instead. Well, Jada, Deanne, and the kids all went to the GLSC. I walked next door to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No pictures were allowed in there, so I was disappointed I had to check my camera. I would have loved to take some pictures. I ended up staying about 2 hours, and in that time, I tried to hit the parts I liked best. The lowest level had the building blocks of rock and roll with displays of the influences of Delta Blues, rockabilly, gospel, motown, and early pioneers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and Elvis. I watched a short film on the roots of rock, and the impact of Motown. This is the level that had the most displays of outfits, guitars, piano’s, etc. I got to see George Clinton’s Atomic Dog shoes (they were like those slippers that are shaped like animals, but much bigger and more detailed unmatched dogs) and Dr. Funkenstein outfit, Bootsy Collins’ bass, Freddy Mercury’s white leotard (with briefs worn on the outside), Jimi Hendrix’s guitars, Joe Walsh’s jacket from the James Gang album cover (part of the Cleveland influence exhibit along with Chrissy Hind’s (of the Pretenders) leather jacket, a whole row of U2 outfits (their props from tours are hanging all over the main entrance), Duane Almond’s guitars, Eric Clapton’s guitars, Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn...I could go on and on. But, I had to get moving along. The upper levels weren’t as packed, but I went through the hall of fame list watching footage of some of the artists. I didn’t have the time to sit for the whole thing. I saw Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” props with Roger Water’s erie words scrawled on the back describing why this was the last time he’d perform it along with the full sized school master, “Pink” in his hotel room, and the large structures from their last album, “the Division Bell”. I ended with their featured exhibit on the work of Bruce Springsteen. I still prefer his early work, but it was still pretty cool to see his lyric notebooks with the chord progressions working out over the top of the words. Jada had texted me while I was in there letting me know I could meet them at 12:30pm over in the science center for lunch. So I picked up a couple souvenir’s (I would have loved to spend more time there, and I could have) and headed over.
We had lunch, and I joined them for the Strange Matter exhibit where they looked at a bunch of different materials (steel, glass, aluminum, sponges, insulators, magnetism, etc) and how they work. The girls were done shortly afterward. Deanne took us through Cleveland itself. We even got to drive by the “Q” where the Cleveland Cavaliers play. There were cameras setting up outside the stadium to talk about the potential LeBron move (to be announced soon as I type this) so we headed back to the Cuyahoga Valley Canal visitor’s center to pick up the Junior Ranger booklets. The girls got right to work. They (and we) learned all about the park, and how it was set up to preserve the canals and towpaths that were established under the watch of none other than George Washington to ferry goods and people around the state of Ohio since there is only one main river artery through the state to the Mississippi delta before the trains came along. There were locks all throughout the canals to help the boats move through. They were built so there would be consistent water and a place for the 3 horse teams to pull the boats at all time. They lined the canals with clay to keep the water from seeping out (which explains why our lawn back home does so poorly).
Ellen still wasn’t feeling very well. It was close to 100 degrees, so we hope it was just heat related. They nearly finished everything there before that visitor’s center closed. We found out that there was a visitor center open until 7pm, so we headed back to the house to get more water and coordinate for dinner with Deanne’s husband. We went to Brandywine Falls in the park as well which is a beautiful falls with a wooden walkway to an overlook. Then we went to the Peninsula Visitor’s center that was open until 7pm to get Ellen and Phoebe sworn in for their Junior Ranger badges...but the ranger couldn’t find any there! It was very disappointing. The girls still got sworn in, and we left our address with them to send along the badges when they get them. Hopefully they will send them along.
We went out to dinner at a place called the Winking Lizard. It’s a local Cleveland restaurant chain known for their BBQ. I had a BBQ chicken breast, and it was good. Ellen finally started feeling ok by the time dinner was over, but she was still really warm. When we got back to the house, they all went to bed, and they all seemed to fall asleep fairly well. We all stayed up to watch where LeBron was going, made up our lunch for tomorrow, and then finally went to bed. (By the way, LeBron decided to move to Miami, not Chicago or Cleveland. Can’t say I care all that much.)