The First Four Days

When I was a little girl, my paternal grandmother always went along with us on family vacations. My paternal grandfather died when I was almost 3 years old and with my dad being an only child, he and his family (me, my brother, and our mom) became the focus of her world. She was a wonderful grandmother and was pretty much happy and content doing whatever we wanted to do. She always brought some kind of journal along on our vacations (which we took every year) and recorded the things we did every day. I have now begun this same tradition. I recorded our Wisconsin Dells/Mall of America vacation in 2003 (when B1 was 6 and B2 was 3), then it was Disney World in 2004, Tennessee in 2005, Texas in 2006, and now this year's trip. Since we always travel at the same time of the year, I enjoy looking back and seeing what we were doing on the same date in previous years. This year, I have kept my journal on our laptop. When we get home, I will print it out and keep a hardcopy. So, following are the notes I have kept for the first four days of this year's trip:

July 25, 2007: We left home this morning at 4:08am with Mom and Dad following us. We got on I-70 east and drove until just on the other side of Indianapolis when we stopped for breakfast at McDonald’s. We continued driving on I-70 until we got to Columbus, Ohio and then took I-71 north. We arrived in Cleveland much earlier than we expected, at about 3pm, even with a 1-hour time change. We found a Super 8 Motel along I-90 on the west side of Cleveland and we booked 2 rooms. We then headed back downtown and ate supper at a restaurant called Flannery’s. It was OK but not as good as we expected it to be. We went to the Cleveland Indians baseball game against the Boston Red Sox. The 4 of us girls all wore red Cardinal shirts and we got a few funny looks from the fans there. The Indians won the game, 1-0. We liked the stadium and our seats were in right field, near the foul pole. We came back to our motel after the game and soon went to bed.

July 26, 2007: My hubby and I got up and walked for almost an hour this morning, outside. We came back and got cleaned up and everyone grabbed a little breakfast at the hotel. Mom and Dad headed to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while the 4 of us headed to Sandusky and Cedar Point. We first found our hotel for tonight and then went to the amusement park We first rode a roller coaster called the Blue Streak. B2 wasn’t too fond of it and I don’t think B1 really liked it either. We rode a lot of other rides all day long today as well as eating both lunch and dinner inside the park. We ate lunch at the Midway Market and dinner at a place called Macaroni’s. The weather today was beautiful though, almost cool at times. We didn’t have to spend a lot of money on drinks. We stayed at the park until closing time, which was 10pm. Then we came back to the hotel, brought all of our things in to our room, wrote out some postcards, and went to bed.

July 27, 2007: Today I got up about 8am and went to the hotel next door (also a part of Cedar Point) and did my walking on their treadmill. Bruce walked outside once I came back and took a shower. Then he showered, and we headed out. We went to the McDonald’s across the street and ate an early lunch, about 11am. Then we headed to Soak City, which is Cedar Point’s water park. It turned out to be a pretty cool place. The lines were not bad AT ALL (maybe we waited 10 minutes at the most) and there were many more slides than we expected. They had 10 regular water slides, 3 enclosed dark water slides, a wave pool, a family slide, 2 lazy rivers, 4 kids areas, and an adult area with a swim-up bar and hot tub (which we didn’t get to visit, by the way!). The best part was (and always seems to be, no matter what water park we are at) the Family Raft ride. It really took us up on the sides of the slide and made us laugh the entire time. I think we rode it 4 times! We stayed from about 11:45am until 8pm. Then we went to a Dave’s Famous BBQ Restaurant right outside the park for dinner. Yum! Came back to the hotel and met back up with Mom and Dad, who are now here with us and will be for the remainder of the trip. Went to bed about midnight.

July 28, 2007: Today we all got up and got going by 9:30am. We had a quick breakfast and then headed to Cedar Point. The girls went with Mom and Dad today so my hubby and I could ride our hearts out on all the roller coasters and everything else that the girls won’t ride! We went on lot of stuff! We rode one coaster that is over 300 feet high. That one had the longest wait, which was just over an hour. Everything else we rode was pretty reasonable as far as wait time is concerned. B1 even rode the “Tower Power” ride with me, which was a big surprise! She liked it enough that we rode it twice. It’s a ride where they shoot you up 260 feet and then drop you back down that same distance. She’s still not so sure about the coasters though, but at least my hubby will ride those with me. We avoided the upside ones though, but there were plenty of others to make us happy. One of them was similar to Space Mountain at Disney World. I wanted to ride a coaster called "Top Thrill Dragster" but the line was always over 1.5 hours long. We met Mom and Dad and the girls for dinner at 6pm and then after that, they left and came back to the hotel and swam. My hubby and I stayed but didn’t end up riding anything else much. We bought some souvenirs and had an ice cream snack. We came back to the hotel by 9pm. Tomorrow will be a long driving day towards Cooperstown.