| Our first 1000 miles |
|---|
| Fifty nine days after Randy’s official retirement day, we packed the car and headed out on our 2nd big adventure! We had just returned from a week in Belize with Rebecca and had a terrific time exploring the Mayan ruins and snorkeling the 2nd largest barrier reef in the world. One of the best parts of the trip…..besides getting some sunshine and recharging my inner solar battery and spending time with our daughter, was having Rebecca introduce us to watermelon juice! Wow! Flavor explosion! Good with rum too! Now we travel by car….. Randy and I had talked about driving xcountry some day. He had done it twice before. Once with his brother Ken and once for his senior college geology thesis after we were married. I had never completed such a journey. I’ve landed in a few places for brief visits but never really drove west of Niagara Falls. North and south was checked off numerous times. My dad’s parents lived on the Gulf of Mexico and we would drive down each year for a visit. Indulge me in one side story……my parents thought it would be a good idea to trade in their 1959 Chevy station wagon for a 1967 Mustang convertible – a great family car! NOT! I sat in the back, on the hump, with my two teenage sisters (both 5’9)and my little sister sat between the two bucket seats on a towel between my parents! My dad made a luggage carrier that sat on our trunk with suction cups! Somehow the luggage held on. But how lucky were we….we were going to Florida! I tend to ramble and go off on tangents, so apologies now! We started our journey by having lunch with my 103 year old dad and then we headed south west on I88. Our first stop was only an hour away in Oneonta where we took a selfie of us in front of our first apartment! That’s where our story began and we thought it was fitting for it to be the start of this journey too! We found an awesome apartment by posting note cards around town. Newlyweds looking for a nice place to live. Will shovel or help with chores in exchange for reasonable rent. We ended up the the former President of SUNY Oneontas house with his 99 year old wife. We were there to help with emergencies and one night she fell and broke her hip and she needed us. It was a great 3 room apartment and the rent was $150 a month including utilities. After a few months we raised the rent to $180 because I was working as a teller at Wilber National bank and Randy was working for a pharmacy while finishing his senior year at Hartwick. We felt better about giving her some extra money, even though looking back, she was probably very well off! We wanted to avoid the NYS Thruway, actually we would like to avoid most major highways, so we went along the NY/PA boarder. Our first night was spent in Jamestown NY. We are also hoping to avoid big chain hotels and restaurants too, at least when possible. Randy found a great find in Jamestown. We stayed at the Harbor View on a lake Chautauqua. It was new, beautiful and had a great restaurant. It reminded us of a new Sagamore, but it was not expensive! Probably because of the time of year. The bed was great too! We had a great sleep and We know we will not always be that lucky. Day 2 Well, we hit a small glitch. Our navigation wasn’t being cooperative. It probably had something to do with the fact I forgot to put the car in park for night. Thank goodness we were not on a hill! We have a backseat full of travel books and an oversized Atlas – do they even make them small? We used our phone to get us on the road. Get ready…..here’s a plus 1 for AI – Randys AI assistant, helped us with unlocking and resetting the nav system and it worked. Bizare….leave the drivers door open for 3 minutes, tap your foot 4 times etc! We found our way to Cleveland Ohio! What a pleasant surprise! It’s a really nice little city! You could not find a piece of litter on the ground. It wasn’t crowded at all and EVERYONE was super friendly! The Rock and Roll Hall of fame was our first stop. The city has speakers playing music as you walk to the museum. The museum is located on the shores of Lake Erie, which was super blue and looks more like the sea than a lake. So much to see, and hear! So much fun! I dare anyone to enter that museum and not start to wiggle your hips or tap your toes. I wanted to dance my way through it. The building housed so many of the legendary artifacts of the history of modern music dating back to the 1940s where the roots of rock and roll began. If you’re ever out this way, make it a stop. It’s totally worth it. After the museum, we went to a pedestrian street with restaurants and bars with music playing. The restaurant that I had picked to eat at, Mabel’s, a super famous must do restaurant, was closed on. Mondays….oh well, we will find another…..but wait, it’s open! The hostess said they sometimes open when the Cleveland Cavaliers have a home game. We got a table for two and after perusing the menu, I decided on the Polish Girl. How could I not order that! It was a kiebasi on a hoagie roll with pulled pork and coleslaw on top! I knew the moment I ordered it that it would need to keep the Tums close at hand! After our dinner, we decided to go to the basketball game. Neither of us had ever been to a NBA game before. We don’t follow basketball. We followed the crowd streaming past Mabel’s and voila, the stadium. We didn’t have tickets and asked a security person which door to go in. The staff couldn’t not have been more helpful or friendly! We had the nose bleed seats but you could see the game just fine. Their fans are super fun too. We were so happy to see so many families and young people at the game. They kept the upper seats super affordable. That’s really smart because that’s how you build a healthy fan base. When they grow up and have jobs, they’ll be buying the more expensive seats. During one break, the Jumbotron, had four big nozzles protrude and they started throwing real flames and flame balls out. We could feel the warmth! We looked at each other and then at the exits and shook our heads……nothing could possibly go wrong with that scenario! Haha! All in all, Cleveland was a great surprise to us both. A friendly, super clean city and pretty city! Would like to visit it again someday! |
Site Title 
Leave a reply to Rich and Cassie Allen Cancel reply