Ohio and Michigan

May 14 – 21, 2002

"Cleveland? You must be getting to the bottom of your must see list." That's what a co-worker told me when I told him where I was going on my next vacation. And he is from Cleveland! I guess not too many people from California would consider taking a vacation in Ohio and Detroit but since I have been to every state, I have found that there are many things and places of historical interest and natural beauty to be found everywhere in this great country of ours. I still have hundreds of places I want to see before I die. My girlfriend Kathy also loves to travel having visited 37 states, and she just happened to have wanted to see most of the same places on this trip that I did.

Kathy and I both had free airline tickets from our frequent flyer miles - on different airlines. No problem. Even though we took different routes, we left Sacramento within 30 minutes of each other and arrived in Cleveland within a few minutes of each other. We picked up a rental car that I got on Priceline.com and got our room for the night as it was late. It took all day to get there and was three hours later than in California.

The weather gave us concern as we planned a few outdoor activities on this trip and it had been very cold (near record lows for May - in the thirties), rainy and windy in Ohio and it looked like that trend would continue while we were there. We ended up changing our itinerary around so we actually did all our outdoor stuff when the weather was only partly cloudy - really nice on some days actually.

On our first full day, we drove to Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which is only about 20 miles south of Cleveland. This is the only National Park in Ohio and has only been a National Park for about two years. We saw parts of the old Ohio and Erie Canal there as well as a covered bridge and some nice water falls. After spending about a half day at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, we drove a little north of Cleveland to Headlands Beach State Park at Fairport Harbor and walked to a lighthouse out on the point there.

Brandywine Falls, Cuyahoga Valley N.P.

Then we drove into Cleveland and saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. It stays open until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday nights and we needed all that time as we spent about five hours there. I usually get burned out in museums but there was so much there that I was interested in seeing. They had special exhibits on John Lennon and my favorite guitarist, Jimi Hendrix. I think my favorite items though, were the exhibits of napkins, scraps of paper, etc., that the artists actually wrote songs on (some while on drugs, no doubt). After the museum, we walked around the area there and saw a beautiful sunset over Lake Erie.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland

The next day Kathy and I split up (no we didn't have a fight). I wanted to see the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton and she wanted to visit her friend in Pittsburgh so we rented a second car and both took off on long road trips (300 miles for her and 410 miles for me). The Air Force museum was awesome - it's located just outside of and on Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton. They have over 300 aircraft on display including the only surviving XB-70, an ME-262,

a B-36, several of the Presidential aircraft, the B-29 that dropped the second atomic bomb as well as hundreds of static displays - and it's all free!

They have aircraft parked outside and in three huge hangars and they are building a fourth hangar to house Cold War items. You really need two days to see it all but I saw most of it in the five hours I had. One thing I missed however was the alien bodies they brought from Roswell New Mexico to a hangar at Wright Field in 1947…I'll have to see them next time.

Kathy had a good time getting a tour of Pittsburgh seeing the Carnegie Art Museum among other things. We met up in Cleveland that night fairly tired from our long road trips.

The next day was pretty full (an understatement). Our first stop was the Pro-Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. We spent several hours there. They had a great NFL film that put you right in the action on the field.

From there, we drove back to Cleveland to see the U.S.S. Cod - a WW II fleet submarine. We got to crawl around inside and even though sub crews had the best chow in the Navy, they couldn't pay me enough to serve on a sub.

After the sub, we went to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Kathy saw some works by her favorite artist, Claude Monet but they didn't have any works by my favorite artist, Albrecht Dürer.

After the Art Museum, we headed to the fairly new Jacobs Field to see the Cleveland Indians lose to the Kansas City Royals 6-2. The stadium is really nice. It was cold and windy and reminded me of games at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It started raining around the 8th inning but they still finished the game and had a spectacular fireworks show after the game.

The next day we drove 165 miles to Detroit. Our first stop there was the Motown Historical Museum. The museum is not in the greatest neighborhood - many of the houses there were abandoned and in bad shape. While Kathy was taking a photo of the museum, a man who was walking by on the sidewalk stopped and asked her what she was taking a photo of. When she told him the Motown Museum, he asked her "why?" Maybe he thought we came to the 'hood to rip off Michael Jackson's glove (it had been stolen once out of the museum).

Motown Museum, Detroit

We had a guided tour of the museum. In the recording studio, the guide picked me and three other guys to transform into the Temptations singing "My Girl" at the Apollo Theatre. The guide taught us some moves but there were too many white guys in our group so we weren't too synchronized - the Apollo crowd gave it up for us anyway. I'm glad they didn't let us videotape that!

After the Motown Museum, we went downtown and walked though the Renaissance Center - not much to see there. For being the Motor City, Detroit has to have THE WORST roads in the country!

The next day we planned to spend all day at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village in Dearborn (a suburb of Detroit). What we didn't realize is that on Sundays it is only open from 1200 - 5:00 P.M.

We had several hours to kill so we checked out Belle Isle Park, which is located in the Detroit River between the U.S. and Canada. This is the only place where Canada is located due south of the U.S. From there, we drove through Grosse Pointe, which is where all the rich and famous in Detroit must live. There were some incredible houses along the shore of Lake Erie there.

We knew there was a lot to see at the Museum and Village so we got there just after it opened. It was so big it was overwhelming. The Village sits on 81 acres and was started in 1929 by Henry Ford and opened to the public in 1933. His boyhood home is on the site and he moved actual houses and buildings from all over the country there to create his village. Among the buildings there are the Wright Brothers' home and the Cycle Shop where they built their airplane, Thomas Edison's boyhood home, shop, Menlo Park laboratory and power station, Noah Webster's house, and Luther Burbank's house. There are dozens of other buildings and they have people in period costumes demonstrating crafts. It's kind of like Williamsburg in Virginia except it covers different periods in America's history. There are old cars driving around, a train, steamboat and horse-drawn carriages.

After several hours walking around the village, we headed for the Henry Ford Museum, which is right next to the village. The museum is contained in one building that covers 12 acres! There is just about every type of invention, tool, appliance and vehicle in the museum. Some of my favorite items were the chair that Lincoln was assassinated in, a folding bed used by General George Washington, the Limousine that Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated, Henry Ford's first car and the only surviving Dymaxion House invented by American futurist R. Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller. The entrance to the museum is an exact replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

This was another place that I could have spent more than a day seeing but we left at closing time and drove 115 miles to Sandusky, Ohio. The next day, we spent the whole day at Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky. The weather looked bleak when we arrived at 10 a.m. but it quickly cleared up. We had a very cool but sunny day. It was actually snowing in Cleveland only about 62 miles away.

Cedar Point Amusement Park, Sandusky

Cedar Point is the Roller Coaster Capital of the world. It has 15 coasters and competes with Magic Mountain near Los Angeles for the most coasters in one park. After entering the park, we headed directly for the newest coaster, "Wicked Twister" which spins you forward and backward over 200 feet straight up in the air (the two towers were swaying in the breeze for added thrills). Next we rode the number one rated roller coaster in the world - the 310 feet high "Millennium Force".

Wicked Twister, Cedar Point

The first drop is almost straight down and you fly at 93 miles per hour! Next up was the "Mean Streak" which was the tallest wood coaster in the world when it opened in 1991. By this time, I was walking around like I was drunk but Kathy wanted to keep riding. I passed on the next several coasters while Kathy rode almost all 15 in the park - some 2 or three times as the lines weren't very long. She rode on the third and eighth-ranked coasters in the world. Being that this was early in the season there, there were no shows so the only thing to do was ride the rides, eat and play the games. Before we left, I rode two more coasters with Kathy. We had a great time and Cedar Point would be a fun place to spend a couple of days in the summer when the shows would be playing and you could go to the water park and beach there.

On our last day, we found the Marblehead Lighthouse - the oldest operating beacon on the Great Lakes and Johnson's Island near Sandusky. Johnson's Island held a POW camp for approximately 10,000 Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and there is a cemetery there with about 200 graves of Confederate officers. From there we headed back to Cleveland and caught our flights back to Sacramento arriving within a half hour of each other. We drove 1,200 miles on this trip, which was shorter than many of our previous trips as there was a lot to see in a smaller area. I have never seen so many museums in such a short period but I really enjoyed them all…so much to see, so little time!

Marblehead Lighthouse

Music:
Ohio - Crosby, Stills and Nash
Cleveland Rocks - Ian Hunter
My Girl - Temptations
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