August Road Trip - Part 2 (Cleveland)

We left home on Sunday, August 6 and arrived in Cleveland the following day after the short but fun-filled time with Christie and Mark we shared about in the last post. When we shared our itinerary with friends, at least one pointed out that it appeared we were doing the Rust Belt tour with our first three stops being Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Flint. This stop was a long awaited visit with our dear friend, Kirby, who I got to know initially when she was an MA student at CJP. It was a dream come true to shift for a few days from our several hour long phone calls every month or two to sharing space in person. Being able to visit her in her home was so special, after she had graced our home with her presence many times. There's something really beautiful about getting to experience a person in their home context and being able to visit a place and see it through the eyes of someone who makes that place home. It was such a delightful road trip in that respect - we were only true tourists, with no local guide, during our time as a family on Lake Michigan.

We also cannot get any further in these trip posts before giving a huge shout out to our incredible home and farm sitters!! THANK YOU TO GRANDMA AND GRANDPA MYERS AND TIBBY! Our trip would not have been possible without several people tending to plants and animals in our absence. My parents were around and helped out except for the few days they escaped to the hills of West Virginia. It seemed like they were all very happy for our return. They did not complete the animal training we were hoping for - for the pigs to not flip their pans and push them to the back of their pen and for the chickens to stay out of the garden. 😉

So now to some of the family highlights from the second stint of our road trip. Family chosen pictures and captions below. Enjoy!

Myers family road trip tradition: wrapping presents for the travelers to open at strategic moments (i.e. kids about to decompensate)! We ran out of time to do much of this ourselves, but thanks to Grandma Myers we had one package to open on each length of our trip. Here the children assemble a homemade jigsaw puzzle of aforementioned grandparents.

Along the way we had plenty of time before we were supposed to arrive in Cleveland and noticed a sign for Chagrin Falls, which turned out to be a town in addition to a land feature. When we came upon this waterfall, we thought the falls were appropriately named. 

Here we are feeling rather chagrined. 

Jason cheered up dramatically, however, when he got the opportunity to introduce his family to his latest enterprise! 

Jason saw a popcorn store and really, really wanted some caramel corn. Lo and behold, out the back window of the popcorn store we happened to spy THE REAL CHAGRIN FALLS. We now think the reason they are called Chagrin Falls is that you are likely to leave without seeing the actual falls because of the decoy falls on the other side of the bridge and then will feel rather chagrined when you realize you missed the main event. 

Kirby warmly welcomed us into her home (with ALL our stuff) and around her table for a delicious home cooked meal. 

Stella welcomed us too and became the main focus of Alida's attention, which was just the way Stella wanted it!

Four of us gave Kirby's spare room a solid work out, while Kali slept roomily on the couch in a room all by herself. 5 guests was 5x more than she'd ever hosted overnight in this apartment. Nice work, Kirby!

Tuesday's Cleveland adventures started with an introduction to an incredible local independent bookstore that we could have spent the whole day in. Good thing we didn't because as it was we left with a somewhat intimidating stack of books, at least to the car packer. 

A train ride to downtown Cleveland was a HIGHLIGHT of Terah's day.

But she also enjoyed the sprinklers in downtown Cleveland...

...which were NOT stinky. 

We did the perfunctory tourist photographs...we were tourists after all.

This was so much better than a phone call!

Observe the sky being scraped!

After the downtown adventure, Kirby took us to a great local municipal beach on Lake Erie. Kali made her usual mistake when around water of thinking she would just dip her toes in. She did, in fact, dip her toes...and then her ankles...and then her knees...and so on and so forth! Terah demonstrated better self awareness and started in a swimsuit.

Gorgeous sunset...gorgeous water...followed by delicious ice cream at Kirby's favorite ice cream joint (black sesame was among the flavors sampled).

We have now struggled for several minutes to get this picture to accept a caption. It clearly does not want us to comment on our hilarious game of Ransom Notes.

Terah snuggling with Daddy

Stella snuggling with Alida

Kirby had to work on Wednesday so we relaxed (including with Kirby's mom, who had brought us donuts from her second favorite donut shop) and then bought a bevy of hats from Mr. Gilbert's Hats, an independent hat store in the Larchmere neighborhood. 

While walking around we were tickled to see this sign touting Shaker Square as the second oldest planned shopping center. This was just one of several "second place" moments we stumbled across in our visit to Cleveland. This was especially funny because Jason had years ago heard a comedian from Cleveland declare that Cleveland's motto ought to be, "We're number 2!" because of the number of things they have the second best of. It was eerie (ha ha) how often that was borne out in our visit.

Kirby and Janelle did slip out for one walk just the two of them before needing to resort again to phone call walks. The nature center we walked to could have easily entertained our family for the better part of another day in the area!

Petting goodbye to Stella

Licking goodbye to the salt lamp

Saying and hugging goodbye to Kirby (we did not pet or lick her!)

Onward to Flint, Michigan!

August Road Trip - Part 1 (Pittsburgh)

It was just a week ago today that we started our long sojourn home from Decorah, Iowa. Before the memories fade, we're sitting down together as a family to caption a few of our favorite photos from each stop on our two-week road trip, and enjoy traveling back through the memories.

The first leg of our travels was to Pittsburgh, PA, to visit Aunt Christie and Uncle Mark. It was quite a rush getting the farm ready for our absence, getting ourselves ready to be gone, and crossing our fingers that everything we needed would fit in the Subaru Forester. It, and we, did all fit (barely), so, ready or not, there we went...

All smiles, at least at the beginning! Cameo by Chocolate (the rabbit). We chose the smiling picture over the one where Jason looked like he was about to drop over from exhaustion from packing the car!

Cool as a cucumber!!! Recovering from packing the car with some electrolytes.

On this stint we were in no particular rush so decided to take in a scenic overlook along the way. Turned out to be very underwhelming. 

After the car ride Terah needed to get her feet up! We are being nourished by Christie and Mark before heading to downtown Pittsburgh for the evening. 

Everybody but Terah enjoyed an outdoor showing of Turning Red in the park (Terah was there, she just didn't enjoy it...TOO SCARY! ). It was a good thing we bailed on camping outside due to predicted thunderstorms as that would have put Terah over the edge!

After a night of sleep in Mark's sister's home, we showed up on the porch again and were served a scrumptious breakfast before some more Pittsburgh adventuring.

First stop: a Children's Museum that Terah said was no fun because there were "too many children!" 😂 After rejoining Christie and Mark outside, the kids went to get cooled off in an outdoor mist installation that proved rather stinky!

There was a bridge. We walked across it. This was not a surprise; it's Pittsburgh.

Someone had drawn faces on the bridge. This was (slightly) more of a surprise. Find the face to match your mood! Can you find the real face?

Gosh it looks like the water is coming out of Terah's head. This is at the fountain on The Point (where the Allegheny and the Monongahela join to form the Ohio River). Less stinky (dry humor for a wet fountain).

Can't be this close to three rivers without at least dipping our toes in. Some had to show considerable restraint to not fully submerge themselves (TERAH!)

Before getting on the road to Cleveland, Christie and Mark treated us to Burgatory. We can see why it gets good reviews. The burgers were not stinky at all despite Terah's face.

On the eve of our departure!

News flash: the Myers-Benners are leaving Tangly Woods for 2 weeks in 12 hours (and the tension is building a bit faster than the excitement at present - especially for me!). I feel confident that the excitement will come as soon as we are actually all packed (like sardines) in the car with all our stuff and we see that it all fits and no one needs to be strapped to the roof. Right now, I'm too tired to feel much of anything other than weariness. It's been a big push this week to try to get the place ready to leave to others. We've been trying to work ahead and do everything but the day to day maintenance. It's kinda telling that it feels cruel to leave others with more than the minimum of what it takes to do the daily animal and plant maintenance stuff. I hope that Tangly Woods will be kind to those keeping things going in our absence. It sure is rewarding us with abundance in the food realm right now.

This break feels really important and essential! And it is not lost on me that it is a CJP student (and some of her CJP student colleagues), along with my parents, that are making this trip possible for us. A trip in August would have been unheard of during my time working at CJP. And now I'm traveling in August and students are helping to tend our place. It feels like a sweet turn of events!

Knowing that this week's news will pale in comparison to a road trip via parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Iowa to see friends, new places and attend a dear friend's wedding, I'm gonna take a few minutes to share some sights from this week while I sit with Terah to help her fall asleep (it's hard to relax enough to fall asleep when there is still the buzz of others packing and getting things together). We'll see if the clicking of keys can lull her to sleep! 

I do not know what I would have done this week with our dynamic trio of kiddos! They really rose to the occasion and did a lot to help us get ready for this trip, especially in the food processing department. I was worried we might miss sweet corn season altogether and that would be a hard thing to swallow. Our freezer supply was dwindling and we love having a good amount tucked away, in addition to corn freezing being a really fun family project. So when I learned that gleaning for a reduced price was available this week, we bumped things around and Jason headed to the farm early Tuesday morning and returned home with 6 bushels.

Jason then moved on to other things (finishing up grain winnowing for one) after helping husk for a bit and the girls and I carried on. The girls helped me ALL DAY! Their stamina for indoor (cooler) food processing work far surpasses what they feel up for on summer outdoor gardening days. I cut an ear or two off at the very beginning and then they cut the rest of the 175 cups of corn we froze. I was honestly in awe - felt like I had hit the "helpfulness jackpot" that day and my did I really need it! It was also a harvest day so there were beans to snip and pickles to can. The tomatoes and peppers are still just trickling in, but it won't be long!

It was a FULL but FUN day! We really made an awfully good team and had a healthy little competition going where the girls tried to get corn cut off before I could get another batch blanched and cooled. They succeeded!

This is where I found Terah not too long after the last corn went in the freezer - I guess we sufficiently tuckered her out!

In other news, the most recent playdate with Ivy included some enhanced costuming for playing "Space" - utilizing both my OR outfit and one of the camping mats we borrowed for our trip.

It's gonna be wild to see how much stuff grows in two weeks' time. Here are the girls in their popcorn patches this week

It won't just be the plants that will grow fast. As I stay in touch with all my doula families there are babies becoming bipeds and saying new words and growing out of newborn clothing. This week when Luca was with us, he was really working at saying Alida (ah...da...da with great enthusiasm). 

When a little one is just shy of 4 weeks old, me going away for 2 weeks is half his lifetime. I'm going to miss these little people!

But I'm also super eager to have a little more time to focus on my own brood for a stint!

And I won't mind not seeing a tower of cucumbers for just a bit either!

Hope to come back re-energized for processing tomatoes! Just got our very first pasta sauce canned the other night and it happened again - all the produce I needed to work up "magically" (it truly feelings that way!) came out to exactly 7 quarts with a tiny bowl for Terah to eat fresh!

Well before I can say we are leaving today, I'm going to sign off and go start packing my clothes! The house is much quieter with the younger gals sacked out now and Jason on their heels. One step at a time and we'll be heading out of here in the morning. I have already warned my family that I'll probably take my first nap minutes into our trip!!