Between Cleveland and Akron, OH lies one of the newest National Parks in the US, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (est. 2000). We meandered through it on our way south after leaving Cleveland. Honestly, the vibe is a bit odd. I grew up just outside Milwaukee, near the Menomonee River Parkway. A lot of this park feels like a nice, suburban parkway. Sure, it’s a bit bigger. There are a few [...]
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Traveling with four people is hard when things don’t go as planned. If it’s just Paul and me, we’ll seek shelter in a library or hotel when hit with a series of cold, rainy days. But for a few days, we were traveling with my parents and, just like when they visited us in Chicago, I wanted to keep them entertained. It was like they were on my home turf, [...]
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Walking through the woods on Kelleys Island, Paul has his eyes on the ground. Paul always has his eyes on the ground when we’re walking through the woods in the spring. He’s looking for morels. We found one morel once, a big one, but we tragically left it in the fridge at our friend’s place when we headed back home from Madison…the fridge of our friend who hates mushrooms. Eyes [...]
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I love it when my expectations are exceeded. Kelleys Island, north of Sandusky in the middle of Lake Erie, was an amazing, unique place. Quiet, peaceful, old. Perfect ratio of restaurants/bars to residents (not that any of the restaurants/bars were open yet, but…). Cute houses, old vineyards, almost-natural parks (how long does it take an old quarry to turn back into nature? So far, 60 years and counting). I can [...]
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So, Ohio has Islands. Yep. Islands. Along its coast. Yeah, the coast of Lake Erie north of Sandusky. We visited two. Just watch out, there are snakes. Kelleys Island Kelleys Island feels like a sleepy old colonial island off Connecticut. Or maybe off Door County, Wisconsin. It’s quiet. Most of the inner island is old quarry. There are glacial grooves to see and not much else, and that makes it [...]
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In Detroit, you don’t eat hot dogs, you eat Coney Dogs — hot dogs topped with bean-free, all-meat chili and chopped onions and mustard. Dip into the Ohio-area and they’ll put cheese on it too. Yum. Note: This ain’t a New York thing.
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Look, you’re a great state. Everybody knows that. You have three cities that start with the same letter — C — that’s amazing. And it confuses everybody. Cleveland rocks, Cincinnati has chili (with cinnamon, another C!), and Columbus … well Columbus has a Honda campus on the edge of its sprawl. Er, wait. Don’t they all have the chili? Columbus rocks too, right? I can’t keep them straight. I’m sorry to tell you [...]
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