The grapes look like they are ready to harvest, and we looked for a you-pick vineyard to buy some of those grapes. They have seeds and thicker skins than the grocery-store varieties, but Denisa really likes them.
We did find grapes for sale in the local produce stands. We love the occasional produce stand by the side of the road, and we shopped at this one on more than one occasion. The prices are listed on the board or marked on the basket. It's all self-serve, with sacks available, weighted down by a rock. There's a note taped to the lock box that reads, "Thank you for your honesty."
Some of the bigger, more sophisticated road-side markets have employees to weigh and bag your produce. We are seeing more evidence that fall is on its way with pumpkins and mums for sale everywhere.
We don't go shopping for knick-knacks and t-shirts. But our favorite souvenirs are the local produce available wherever we are traveling. It is now apple season, and there seems to be apple orchards in every direction from us. Denisa is holding a cup with our latest discovery--an apple cider slushy. Made with fresh apple cider stirred into a frozen slurry, it is cool and refreshing on a hot day.
We are a little disappointed that we are still experiencing so many hot days. But we now have statistical proof that it has been an unusually hot summer. On the Cleveland television station, the weatherman said that they had experienced 29 days with high temperatures in the 90's this summer. That's way over the average of 8 summer days in the 90's! So it feels good to spend time near the water. This is the Conneaut Marina on Lake Erie in our new little home town.
There are lots of sizable boats filled with fishing gear heading out of the marina on a nice weather day. We have heard that Lake Erie perch are the preferred fish of this region.
We are actually living in Ashtabula County, in Ohio, and the town bearing that name is just 15 miles down the road. They have an unusual bridge that spans Ashtabula River that flows right through town. It's a sizable bridge, and you can see Denisa standing inside the entrance to the bridge.
Since it is less than a mile from the mouth of Lake Erie, there is a lot of boat traffic coming inland that is just too tall for that short bridge. So every thirty minutes, the sirens sound and the traffic arms on each end of the bridge are lowered. Then the process of hinging the bridge up begins. Shorter boats can pass when it first starts opening,
but it must be at its upper heights for tall sail boats to make their way onward.
It's a fun process to watch, even though it does cause a five-minute delay in driving your car downtown if your timing is bad.
Looking on down the river, we could see some of the industry of the area as we looked towards Lake Erie. The bridge in the picture below is actually a coal conveyor belt. It is part of a mile-long conveyor system that transfers coal brought here via train.
Main Street of Ashtabula features little restaurants and gift shops. But Denisa's favorite part of downtown is more of those bounteous flower baskets we keep seeing in the communities along the lake.
On our way out of town, we accidentally discovered the Smolen-Gulf covered bridge.
Even though it was built in 2008, it was purposefully made with a weathered-wood finish to look like many of the bridges of the 1800's that we have been visiting.
But its claim to fame is that it is the longest covered bridge in the United States. Using modern engineering, it is 613 feet long, and stands 93 feet above the river bed below. You can see Mark standing under this huge covered bridge that can't fit into a single picture frame.
We even got a two-fer on this stop, with a second covered bridge right under that big tall one. A brand new wooden covered walking bridge is part of a hiking trail by the creek.
A long bridge for a walking bridge,
it is definitely dwarfed by the 613-foot highway bridge that we never could capture from end to end.
We accidentally found the country's longest covered bridge as we were driving towards the staging area for the Western Reserve Greenway. We left the car in the parking lot, and started on a ten-mile ride through the woods on another of the rail-to-trails paths that we like so well.
This is a 43-mile trail, but Denisa picked this section because it included crossing a railroad trestle. She was expecting one of those tall train trestles that looks like part of a wooden roller coaster frame. She was a little disappointed to see this trestle was just a rusty bridge beam over a creek.
Our bicycle path dipped out of the forest and into agricultural fields. We have driven by many fields of corn in the last month, but biking gets you closer to see the crop better. With Denisa standing beside the stalks, we can see that they are almost ten feet tall.
We have been buying some wonderfully tender local sweet corn, and it seems to be included in our menus almost every day. But this field is planted with field corn, with big tough kernels that will be used for animal feed.
After our bike ride, we were back in the car to make our way down more country roads. We found the Benetka Road Covered Bridge. Just a single lane wide, it is barely tall enough for the school bus that travels this road every day.
On a lonely country road on a beautiful afternoon, it was like finding a little piece of history to us. But we're guessing that bus-load of school children takes it for granted as an every-day occurrence.
This country road is taking us to Brant's Apple Orchard and Cider Mill. The apples they just picked are still in wooden crates in the store entry. We were sad to see that they were already cleaning up the presses from making apple cider that day.
Inside the store are boxes of the different types of apples they raise. There were names of apples that we had never seen, because they don't usually hit the grocery stores in Oklahoma. Of course, we bought one of each so we could determine our favorite.
We did some more "souvenir" shopping in the store while we were there. Brant's is also famous for their apple cider donuts and other baked goods. There was a steady stream of customers coming into the store while we were there. We also had to buy sample sizes of their slushes because we couldn't decide between their apple cider and fresh grape drinks.
Eating donuts and sipping fruit slushes is a nice way to finish an afternoon road trip on the little country roads around our new home town! Who knew that retirement could be this much fun?!?
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