Circumnavigating Lake Erie - June/July 2009
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Kris and I woke early for our 11 am flight from DFW to Buffalo. We had a layover in DC and a thirty minute delay to Buffalo. It was a bad day for me. I got really queasy in the bus ride to the terminal, and there was a lot of turbulence throughout the flights due to weather. We made it without an accident.
The car we received was really nice though. We got a black 2010 Hyundai Sonata with 810 miles on it for our trip. We will have many more miles on the car before our trip is through. We went to our hotel for the evening. (Kris wound up liking this car so much, he bought one as his next vehicle.)
I found the Salvatore’s Garden Place Hotel in Buffalo through Orbitz, and it is really a charmingly unique place. There are sculptures, a salt-water aquarium, and unique décor. The photos won’t do it justice. Really charming place! We ate dinner at Just Pizza, a neighborhood pizza joint that’s won awards. I got a salami sub…Just Pizza my booty.
Terri and Adam were really delayed…hours. They didn’t get in until after 2am.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Considering how late it was when Terri and Adam got in, we got up fairly early this morning. We grabbed breakfast from the hotel and took a few photos before heading out.
Thanks to the rain, we felt as though it was important to pick us a jacket for Terri and supplies for the trip. We also grabbed those items in Erie before heading to our hotel in Cleveland, OH. The hotel in Cleveland was quite nice. It was the Hyatt Place in Independence/Cleveland.
After dropping all of our stuff off, we drove to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Yager in Mentor, OH.
We visited for a few hours before meeting up with my Uncle Les, Aunt Cindy, and cousins Becky and Carissa at a neat restaurant called the Winking Lizard. They had a large iguana at the restaurant, which was quite a neat thing to see.
After dinner, we said goodbye to my grandparents and headed to Eastlake to my uncle’s house. We chatted for a few hours, and they provided us with some yummy cake. It was really nice to see my family, and I thought it ended too soon. We headed back to the hotel and made it back about 11pm.
We drove through three states, and I saw family I hadn’t seen in 8 years. Quite an eventful day, all in all.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The hotel provided a small continental breakfast, which sufficiently fortified us for our trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
We were in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for quite a few hours. Afterward, we tried to hang out downtown but could not find parking.
We did get to go to the Westside Market for pears and bananas. It is a wonderful farmer’s market hosted in a building provided by the city. We were starving, so we were lucky to find Max and Erma’s for a wonderful lunch.
When we arrived in Sandusky, we checked in at Maples Motel. I did most of my trip research on TripAdvisor.com. All of the hotels were highly ranked for one reason or another. Salvatores Garden Hotel for its unique décor, Hyatt Place for its large room and nice amenities, and the Maples Motel was highly ranked for being a good value. This motel is an old family-run establishment. The rooms are quite old and lack too many modern amenities. However, they were clean and safe, and, best of all, cheap. When I checked in, I noticed they had postcards of a drawing of their motel at the desk. I asked how much and GASP – free postcards!
The older lady who lives there heard me say that I am a postcard freak, and she pulled out their old postcards. The vintage postcards were pretty cool – you have to see the back and the phone number they had at the time. It says, “Dial Sandusky MA. 6-1575”.
After checking in, we went to downtown Sandusky. We walked the marina and the historic waterfront which used to be part of the Underground Railroad.
The breeze felt nice, although it was a bit chilly. We stopped in a great little bookstore that had all sorts of vintage items. It had some Highlights magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, lots of old Little Golden Books, tons of books in general, and some old textbooks. Kris found me a computer textbook from 1980 that I plan to use in the classroom. It has so many amazingly interesting photos of things like punchcard machines, mainframes, mini-computers, the ENIAC, etc. He also found me a book on business spelling from way back when and a book that would have been used like a calculator from the early 1900s. We purchased them all for my classroom. So cool. Terri even found a book she wants to read. Adam had already seen all of their magazines.
It was pretty late when we got finished at the bookstore, so we headed out to find some dinner. We decided to eat at Bob Evans for dinner, which was another northern chain. The meal was quite tasty and quite affordable. We all really enjoyed our meals. They had cool things like fried baked potato bites and apple fries. Then we headed back to the Maples Motel knowing we had an early morning. Unfortunately, the motel was really close to the train tracks, so it wasn’t the best sleep.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Since we were going to go to an amusement park, we were up early Friday. The motel offered free donuts, which some ate, but I chose to eat a breakfast bar and banana for breakfast. I actually woke up feeling really dizzy, so I worried this was going to be a bad day. We were able to get to Cedar Point Amusement Park by 9:30am. The park didn’t actually open until 10, but we were there from 9:30 am – 6:30 pm.
The plan was to meet up with my cousin, Becky, and her friend, Emily. After we went on a coaster called the Mantis, they found us. We headed over to a wonderful coaster called the Maverick, which won an award for the best new coaster in 2007. After the Maverick, we went to another coaster called the Millennium Force. Kris and I had seen this coaster featured on the Travel Channel. They featured groundbreaking technology on this coaster. It has an incredibly large first drop, but they don’t use the traditional chain system to pull the roller coaster up. Instead, they use a cable pulley system (like they use to pull elevators up) which offers a seamless, quick journey upward. It is fantastic. After the Millennium lets you go, there is still another minute and fifteen seconds to the awesome coaster. It’s crazy good. We’d really spent a good amount of time in line waiting for these awesome coasters, so we were all pretty hungry for lunch. Becky and Emily were smart and brought Subway with them. They went to their car to pick it up while we all went and ate burgers. The burgers were so greasy that I felt sick for a while after this. Kris, Terri, and Adam wound up having to ride some coasters without me. Becky and Emily went and rode on some water rides.
Coasters after lunch: Corkscrew, Magnum, Gemini (wooden coaster, Terri sat out too), Power Tower (Terri sat out too and we got some frozen lemonade), Wicked Twister (which I also rode), Blue Streak (wooden coaster), and Raptor (which I also rode). We said goodbye to Becky and Emily at this point and Terri and Adam got funnel cake for the road.
Kris had the mother of all dogs – seriously…that was even its name.
We saw hot dog buns encased in frames signed by tons of celebrities. Some of the more notable were: Steven Perry from Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, three of the members of the Monkees, Nancy Reagan, Mr. T, Jerry Seinfeld, Carrot Top, and some crooked politicians.
We drove through Michigan, saw some of Detroit, went on the bridge to Canada (truly easy to feel turned around) to customs and then drove to Windsor, Canada (after confusing the customs guard) to check in to our hotel, the Windsor Comfort Inn.
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| Huh? |
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Thinking check-out wasn’t until noon, Terri let us all sleep late. While I was in the shower, we got a call from the front desk stating we should have already checked out. Oops. We all had bananas for breakfast and headed out to find the Odette Sculpture Park to see some neat sculptures I’d seen advertised in a local tourism magazine.
After sampling the local flavor the Golden Griddle had to offer, we drove to Leamington, ON to see Point Pelee National Park. We stopped in Leamington on the way at a local waterfront craft fair, which was pretty neat. After that small detour, we continued on our way to Point Pelee National Park.
At the park, we saw lots of trees and nature, and we stopped to view a restored log cabin built in 1850. When going back to the car, we got attacked by giant flies which looked like they were a cross between a horsefly and a bee – no joke. They swarmed around the car. We postulate that they were attracted to the warmth. One landed on the window, and we saw its body pulsating. It was gross.
We kept heading south and arrived at the visitor center and gift shop where we got on the shuttle to the point. They take you to an area where it is only a quarter mile walk to the southern-most point of mainland Canada, however much of that walk is on loose sand. We walked to the point, got some good photos, saw a skeleton of a fish that had been there a while (we were previously warned not to touch it due to the dangers of avian flu), and headed back to catch the shuttle back to the car. It was a neat park, but I could do without the killer fly-bees. I hate flying death monkeys.
We left Point Pelee National Park at 6pm ready to head to Toronto. Estimated drive time according to the Nuvi = 4 hours assuming no stops. It’ll be a late night.
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| Photo courtesy of Adam |
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| Fortification for the trip |
It did take a while for us to get to the hotel. The hotel, which was only four months old, oversold our room type, and Terri and Adam and Kris and I each got our own rooms with whirlpool/Jacuzzi tubs. That was a nice mess up. They took forever to check us in though, and we had to use their valet service. The sucky part...we had to get our car by check out from valet...so we had to pay $35 for about 10 hours of parking. We had to wake up and notify valet we wanted our car (which took 30 minutes to retrieve). Then we were off.
We finally found parking, and we went exploring Toronto. We did a lot of walking, ate, saw a lot of inappropriateness (like porn stores next to children’s toy stores), went to Adam and Eve Chocolatier, and strolled through the "fun" district.
Terri and I went to the Bata Shoe Museum while Kris and Adam went to a movie.
After reporting the break-in and contacting the car rental company, we waited a while for a replacement car. We were really lucky to get one, because the car rental companies have a policy about only renting American cars to American citizens in Canada. We drove to Niagara Falls (Canada side) to check into our hotel, the Sheraton Niagara Falls. We did stop for a bit more fortification by means of candy bar.
The lady at the front desk felt bad for me (since I was near tears while checking in) and wound up giving us free parking for our stay. She thought we deserved a bit of a break. It was really nice of her.
Monday, July 6, 2009
We purchased a Niagara Falls pass that we needed to pick up. Near the pick up location was the wax museum, which was included free with our pass. It was fun.
We then headed to the town Niagara on the Falls for a ride on the Whirlpool Jet Boats. The town was so pretty. We explored it a bit while waiting for our departure time.
Then we geared up for our trip down the river.
Driving back, we had to stop at Souvenir City (reported to be the biggest gift shop in Niagara Falls).
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| Terri really let loose this trip! |
We went to see Niagara Falls lit up that night and went to a Ripley's Believe It Or Not since it was also on our card.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
We made a quick stop to the Niagara Aquarium before heading to the Maid of the Mist on the New York side.
(I highly recommend Maid of the Mist on the New York side and not the Canada side. It's the same ride, but it's half the crowd!) You should also walk the stairs afterward, and you have to do that on the New York side.
After drying off, we went to the Como Family Restaurant (New York side and close to Niagara Falls) for a super tasty dinner. Thanks to Tom for this recommendation.
Terri got a bit of gambling in at the hotel before bed.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Also included in our Niagara Falls pass were tickets to the Bird Kingdom, A Tropical Adventure. It was really nice.
We'd all enjoyed the Como Family Restaurant so much, we hit it again for lunch before heading back to the airport. Great food, huge plates, small prices!
