One of the inhabitants of this great lake are giant turtles. There was a plastic version of a turtle shell at the nature center, so Denisa got to model it. Since we carry our house around with us, this feels very natural.
The nature center also had a hollow 200-year-old hickory tree. If the turtle shell or the motor home doesn't work out for us, we could always take up residence in a tree.
We did some hiking at both the metro parks. This is a delightful piece of green space that the citizens of the city (and visiting wanderers) can enjoy. The paths were completely shaded, and Mark took advantage of a fallen tree to do some diagonal hiking.
From the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center, it was just a short drive to get our first view of our first great lake on this journey. It's been a while since we have taken a walk on a sandy beach, so it felt good today.
At Huntington Beach there were rock jetties reaching into the lake, so we walked to the end of the longest one.
Even though it looks like an ocean to us, Lake Erie is about 57 miles wide, and 241 miles long. The northern half of the lake is in Canada. So that means that the Canadian border is somewhere over Mark's shoulder.
We are in the town of Bay Village, a suburb of Cleveland that lies on Lake Erie. Our next destination was downtown Cleveland. This city is unique in that it hosts three different professional sports teams. While raising two boys, all of our family vacations included visiting sports-related sites. Our sons will be proud to know that we made it to all three of Cleveland's sports venues. They are just minutes apart, and we headed first to the Cleveland Browns football stadium. Situated right on Lake Erie, we are wondering if fans can boat into the home games. We must not be very good luck for our new home team, as they finished the pre-season with a 0-4 record.
The Quicken Arena is where the Cleveland Cavaliers play their professional basketball season. This city has embraced the return of LeBron James. The giant gym where he again plays is further in-land, and in the middle of downtown.
Literally next door is Progressive Stadium, where the Cleveland Indians play baseball.
Obviously Cleveland citizens do more than just watch sports--they also must eat! We had read about Cleveland's West Side Market--hosting a daily food market for over 100 years. We arrived close to their 4:00 closing time, so the produce vendors were making good deals hawking their fresh wares.
Under the tall ceilings of the central building, the meat and cheese vendors were putting away their food for the day. This feels like a very historical place to buy groceries.
Before we left the city, we made a stop for dinner based on a recommendation from our pastor back home. Pastor Brian was raised in Ohio, and he assured us that Swenson's Galley Boy cheeseburger was the best in the world.
We had one other stop on our list, but it was 5:30 by the time we reached the visitor center at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We got some quick instructions from the ranger, then headed out on a ten-mile bike ride that paralleled much of the Cuyahoga River.
The Ohio & Erie Canal was built through this area in 1827. We are biking on the trail that the mules would have walked to pull boats from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.
Along the way we saw what was left of the lock system that was used to raise the boats as they moved south.
The great flood of 1913 damaged the lock system, and the last time these locks were used was about 1920.
This trail has all the components of a great bike ride--it is level with interesting stops. We crossed a few country roads, but when the interstate crossed our path it was far over our heads.
The man-made canal was built in a straight line, unlike the crooked Cuyahoga River. There are a number of bridges on our trail as we crossed over the Cuyahoga River that was curving its way through the valley. In fact, this river was named for the Indian word that means "crooked river."
But the coolest part of this experience is that we have the great option of making this into a one-way bike trail. That is because the national park service runs the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad between Cleveland and Akron. They even have one-way tickets available to bicyclists like us. We can load our bicycles up in the last car of the train, and then ride the train back to the station closest to our parking lot. What an amazing option! As we rode past the lily-covered ponds, we knew that we wouldn't have to ride our bikes this way again.
As we rode down small inclines, we didn't have to dread pedaling back uphill on the return trip. Most of the trail surface was fine rock, but there were also long sections of boardwalk. This was quickly becoming our new favorite bike trail!
We saw a little wildlife and lots of wildflowers. The ranger gave us a train schedule with some information about the stops the train would make. He also said they were running about thirty minutes late for some reason today. What an awesome bike trail system to have a train car for bikes, and passenger cars, and only charges $3 per person for a one-way ticket!
This was such a perfect ride on such a perfect day! What could possibly go wrong? We had plenty of time to make it to the Botzum station stop that the train was scheduled to make at 6:35 p.m. But when we saw just a grassy area along the tracks, we rode on, looking for something that should look like a train station. That's when we heard it--the long whistle of an approaching train. Since we were not at a station, we suddenly realized that we were going to miss the train! What a terrible sinking feeling! That eerie whistle was the worst sound we have heard in a very long time.
We turned our bikes around for the long ride back to the parking lot. We would continue to hear that whistle ahead of us--now far in the distance as it approached another station. It was hard to believe that our awesome bike ride had just doubled in length. Our plan for a ten mile one-way bike ride, begrudgingly turned into a 20-mile bike journey. The return trip wasn't as peaceful or lovely. It was almost dark when we finally pedaled into the parking lot. In retrospect we must say that it had been a great day--even if we had missed the train on our almost-favorite bike ride.
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