Rest assured, this is our last blog post for spring and summer adventure. This entry covers our second trip to Cleveland (I know, some of you are asking - on purpose?) as well as a wrap-up from our trip.
On Thursday, August 31, we drove from South Bend, Indiana to Cleveland. In keeping with staying off the interstates as much as possible, we took Highway 6 all the way - this included going along Lake Erie between Sandusky and Cleveland. The last time we came to Cleveland, we stayed out in the burbs, but this time we used points and stayed in the downtown Marriott.
On Friday, September 1 we walked down to the lakefront on a beautiful morning. We had discovered that there was an air show on the lakefront starting on Saturday. We found out because the jets were practicing (loudly) on Thursday afternoon and Friday.
We got to watch practice runs at the lakefront of the Air Force Thunderbirds (F-16's pictured above). They performed all types of maneuvers including creating a heart with smoke pictured on the right. We also saw the AeroShell Acrobatic team practice using single prop AT-6 Texan planes (training craft used in WWII). It was a beautiful morning and we spent more than an hour standing at the waterfront watching the planes. It was a fantastic, albeit loud, experience.
After our necks got sore from watching the planes, we walked over to nearby Voinovich Park which provided a good place for a picture of the Cleveland skyline and the Cleveland script (see picture on the left).
From there we walked over to the Browns football stadium which stands on the grounds of the former Cleveland Lakefront Stadium (home of the Browns and the Indians when I was a kid) - aka the Mistake on the Lake. The Indians (now Guardians) moved to a baseball only park in 1994 and the old stadium was demolished in 1997 and the new Browns stadium was opened in 1999.
One reason to walk by the stadium was to see the statue of Jim Brown. For our younger readers, Jim Brown, who passed away this past May, was the All-Pro running back for the Browns and, unquestionably, the greatest running back in NFL history. He was a bit before my time, but I heard a lot about him from my Dad who was in college at Cornell at the same time Jim Brown was starring at Syracuse in football and lacrosse.
I no longer follow the Browns since Art Modell stole all the players and moved them to Baltimore (becoming the Ravens). Since you can tell that I've gotten over that, it was great to see the Jim Brown statue and the plaques of the Browns players who are in the NFL Hall of Fame.
On the evening of September 1, we walked from our hotel to Progressive Field (the Jake) to watch the Guardians against the Rays. The Guards are trying to catch up to the Twins so this was an important series for the good guys. The Guardians had won 5-2 on Friday night. On Saturday evening, it was a close game all the way. Cal Quantrill started for Cleveland in his first game after spending a long time on the IL and he pitched a solid 6 innings of 2-run ball. In the bottom of the 7th Bo Naylor, the younger of the two Naylor brothers on the Guardians, drove home what proved to be the winning run with a double to the wall.
That left it for the bullpen to get 6 more outs and that they did to give Cleveland a 3-2 victory and sent more than 25,000 fans home happy. As you can see from the picture on the right, we were two of them. As we stayed for the post-game fireworks, we noted that the Guardians, who have a losing record, won all three games where we saw them play this year. Since this was the last bonus game on our journey, it made for a great end to the trip.
Of course, we did have to drive 9 hours home the next day (Saturday, Sept. 2), but we made it home with no troubles bringing our adventure to an end.
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Here's a quick summary of our trip:
- We drove 20,347 miles over the three legs of trip (note: we took Melinda's Honda CR-V for the first two legs and Todd's Subaru Forester for the big last leg (13,703 miles))
- We went through 35 states, the District of Columbia and one Canadian province (Ontario)
- We visited all 30 MLB ballparks and saw 31 games (2 in Cleveland)
- The team we saw the most, to Todd's chagrin, was the Astros - 5 times. We saw the A's and the Cardinals (two terrible teams this year) 4 times each. There were 11 teams that we saw only once - at their home field.
- We visited 20 national parks and 19 of them were parks we'd never been to before (Glacier was the only repeat). This included 7 NP's in California, 3 in Florida, and 1 each in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Arizona, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Indiana.
- We went to 13 museums along the way and all of them were excellent.
- In addition to driving, we went on 1 plane trip, 16 boat or ferry rides, 2 train rides, one ariel tramway and rode the subways in D.C., New York City and Toronto.
Thanks to all of you for reading along with our adventure. We were encouraged by those who provided positive feedback or responded with jokes or stories. And, we greatly appreciated those who prayed for us and for safety in our travels. God was very good to us on this trip.
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