Encounters with Sustenance: August Road Trip

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!