Lakeside 2021

 As our family grows older and larger (Katie married Travis on 2/29/2020 and Bethany married Jimmy on 8/8/2020), our vacations are changing, too.  Debbie and I sense that it would be a good idea to host the family in nice-sized lodgings in different locations which will allow them to join us.  Our first endeavor, with us still emerging from the coronavirus pandemic and with some of the kids needing to be close to their work/school in NE Ohio, is Lakeside, a family favorite from years ago.

We stayed at 575 Plum Avenue the week of June 12-19, 2021.  Daniel was able to join us for the whole week, while Bethany and Jimmy came up Saturday through Monday and Travis and Katie stayed Monday through Thursday.

Some of the highlights:

We were all able to eat at Sloopy's together for Monday lunch.

Ice cream cones at sunset were still enjoyed, even though the dock was closed for repairs from a ferocious storm in late May.

Fun was had with miniature golf (Jon was the big winner) and shuffleboard (Jon was the big loser).  We played in the Tuesday night "under the lights" tournament, and Jon, Daniel, and Bethany were the three "winners" of the booby prize for having negative scores.

Debbie and Jon used their seek app to classify a lot of flowers and animals, including squirrels and a roaming deer within the grounds.  Of course, it was also time for Mayflys!

A Lakeside rainbow appeared in the sky one evening.

Our cottage was up near the clay tennis courts and the swimming pool, so we enjoyed that quite a bit.  We also enjoyed Patio Donuts!

Jon and Debbie celebrated their 29th wedding anniversary with a dinner at Texas Roadhouse in Sandusky.

Katie learned to play euchre, and we had some late nights with cards and games.

Meals at the Patio and the new Slack House restaurant were also enjoyed, along with the family eating in at our cottage.  Bethany made pancakes on Sunday morning and Katie made Rice Krispie chicken on Tuesday night.  We had a big pick-up order from Wal-Mart in Port Clinton before we checked in on Saturday.

It was very interesting watching the repairs to the lakefront and dock area through the week.  Equipment was brought in on a barge to re-arrange some of the big rocks along the shore.

Travis and Katie rented a golf cart and we enjoyed riding around the streets of Lakeside, dreaming of someday owning a cottage of our own.  Just have to win the lottery first!

Wrap-up and Reflections

We've been home for a few days now.  I've had a chance to repay some of my sleep deficit.  The suitcases are unpacked, the laundry done, and we're settling back into a sense of normalcy being at home.

But before that happens completely, I want to remember what made this trip special.

First, some statistics.

Somewhere in Utah.

We traveled over 5,150 miles.  Our van gave us 23.3 miles per gallon, which cost us $801 dollars for the 221 gallons of gasoline we bought.  The southernmost point we reached was Sedona (Bethany and I made it as far as Cottonwood during a WalMart run).  The farthest west was the Hermit's Rest snack bar on the Grand Canyon shuttle loop.

We visited six national parks: Rocky Mountain (2 days), Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde (2 days), Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon (3 days), and Arches.

One night at the Grand Canyon, I pulled out our GPS and asked it to route us home.  It said we were over 2000 miles away and that it would take 32 hours of driving to get there.  That made me feel very far away.

Funniest moment: driving back to Longmont from Estes Park while the kids were slap-happy.  (Katie insisted there was something wrong with her ears and kept saying, "What? What?" Bethany pretended there was a goat named Nancy on our van roof.)
Scariest moment: watching the girls jump into the creek in Sedona from the high rocks.
Worst part of the drive: Tie between late-night Indiana and the storm in the Rockies.
Highest price of gas: Mesa Verde National Park (never buy gas in a national park if you can avoid it!), $4.079/gallon.
Most "remote" part of the trip: southeastern Utah around Monument Valley.  I was checking the odometer between passing cars, and one time it was over 2.5 miles between vehicles, which meant we started 5 miles apart.
Most difficult hike (long): Climbing up between the Flatirons in Boulder.
Most difficult hike (short): Going to see Zapata Falls at Great Sand Dunes.  It was treacherous walking barefoot over those rocks in ice-cold water!
Nicest surprise: Seeing a desert rainbow.
Most educational moment: Tie between Mesa Verde tours and Grand Canyon geological exhibits.  (Honorable mention: Meteor Crater factoids.)

Second, some personal reflections.

I've been asked if this vacation was better than our Yellowstone trip.  I think they are very comparable, with some important differences.  Yellowstone had a lot more variety to it: there was lots of life (I remember seeing buffalo and elk and greenery), there was water (I remember the geysers and waterfalls), and there was more of a feeling of wilderness, but it wasn't barren.

During our Grand Canyon trip, rocks were the star of the show.  Whether that was petrified wood at the Painted Desert, or the impact of a meteorite at the crater, or the exposed walls of the Grand Canyon, geology was front and center on this trip.  Water was mostly noticeable for its absence, or the trace it had left upon the land from erosion.  Desert, rather than wilderness, seemed to be the environment.

For that reason, I'm glad we did Yellowstone when the kids were younger and waited to do the Grand Canyon for when they were more mature.

On our Yellowstone trip, the spiritual lesson that I most gleaned was diversity.  God made so many kinds of incredible things in the natural world!  While there was a surprising amount of diversity on our Grand Canyon journey, the primary spiritual lesson seemed, to me, to be vastness.  Whether it was stealing a peek at the incredible night sky where the Milky Way was so apparent, or driving through miles and miles of uninhabited terrain, or trying in vain to absorb the scope and scale of the Grand Canyon, it is clear that God's almighty power is deserving of awe.

As our trip comes to a close, I am painfully aware that a chapter in our family's life is ending, too.  In less than a month, Daniel will be heading to Case Western Reserve University to begin life in Cleveland as a college freshman.  While Debbie and I rejoice at this accomplishment, we also know that change is inevitable and irreversible.  Life is always uncertain, and it is unknown how many family vacations, especially of this magnitude, may remain.  While I don't have an official "bucket list," the urge to see the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Meteor Crater, etc, have been a part of me for as long as I can remember.  I feel content and satisfied that that itch has been scratched.

So what remains?  Our family's plans for a vacation next year are decidedly more urban: we want to go to New York City.  My parents took me during my childhood for a visit, and I would like to explore some of the sights like the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building again.  There is also interest in our family in seeing a Broadway show.  Debbie and I have contemplated going several times over the course of our marriage, but the timing just never seemed right.  We almost went two summers ago, but the Statue of Liberty was closed for remodeling.  We also want to visit Virginia Beach (Debbie's been trying to get us there for years!) and we have tickets that are still good for Disney World, so that is also on our list.

In addition to that, I have another long-term "itch" that I have put off throughout life: Visiting the Holy Land.  I recently attended a pastors' conference at Moody in Chicago, and met with several representative from Israel touring companies.  I can't help but think that, at some point, it will be time to get serious about a true spiritual pilgrimage and see some of the things that I have always read about in the Bible.  I believe that it will greatly enhance my ministry, as well as my own spiritual journey.

So, until next time, I am once again signing off from this blog and thank you for reading it.  I enjoy sharing our adventures with our family and friends, and I also feel that blogging (journaling) while my memories are fresh helps me to crystallize the experiences and remember them better later.

Thank you for going on the journey with me!

In Christ,
Jon

P.S. For anyone interested in planning a trip to the areas I've visited, I would be happy to talk with you in greater depth about these locations.  Several people helped me in organizing our trips, and I would be willing to pass on the favor.

There...and Back Again!

Monday, July 15, was a long day.  We awoke in Longmont, Colorado at 6:15 a.m. and our family's day truly wouldn't end until we were back in Alliance, Ohio 26 hours later (28 with the time changes along the way!)

First things first - Patti provided us with some breakfast breads to start our travels.  We bid the Lees farewell (Addison looked particularly sad about her cousins leaving!) and headed for home, departing just after 7:30 a.m.  After a couple of hours on the road, we reached Nebraska!  As I believe I mentioned before, Colorado is a big state!  And so is Nebraska!

We entered into Central Time, and stopped for lunch at North Platte at a Dairy Queen.  This was the first time any of the five of us had ever been in the state of Nebraska.  It is a long, flat state, but at least it was nice to see so much grass and green after being in the southwest desert.

We finally made it through Nebraska and entered Iowa in the late afternoon.  Because of a lack of good eating places, we made it all the way to Des Moines before stopping for supper around 7 p.m.  We had seen a sign along the highway advertising for the "Iowa Machine Shed Restaurant" and I made an executive decision that I would get to pick the place.  The Iowa Machine Shed Restaurant it was!

It is kind of like a farmer's Cracker Barrel.  They offer complimentary tractor rides around the parking lot.  There is a gift store filled with homespun merchandise.  I felt the food was a little pricey, but very good.  Everything tasted homemade, even the mashed potatoes and especially the bread.  I guess there are now several locations in Iowa, and I wouldn't mind seeing them come to Ohio.  I can think of some farmers I know that would really enjoy the place!

We had reservations at an EconoLodge in Bettendorf, Iowa.  We reached it around 11 p.m. and were faced with a decision.  Stop and stay for the night, leaving VERY early in the morning, or gut it out and press on the rest of the way home.  The final vote was 4 to 1 for pressing on (sorry Debbie!) and so, after a break of less than an hour, we went on.

The best part of our decision was going around Chicago at 2:30 a.m.  If you remember our Yellowstone report, the Chicago leg was the worst drive of the trip!  But in the middle of the night, we had the road almost to ourselves.

Contending with the dark and tiredness was the worst part.  Towards the end of the night around 4:30, my eyes were tired and I could tell I wasn't seeing as good as I should, so we pulled over at an Indiana rest stop for about a half an hour.

We made it to Ohio before sunrise.  Debbie took over the driving around Toledo, and then I drove us home from the turnpike, gassing up in Canton.  Of our entire trip to the southwest, we were the hottest and muggiest when we arrived back home at Alliance around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 16.  It felt so good to be home!

Eastward Bound

On Sunday, July 14, we awoke at 8:00 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time and enjoyed one of the best hotel breakfasts of our trip.  They had blueberry waffles, sausage and eggs, and fresh fruit.

We checked out by 9:30 and headed to Arches National Park, the "dessert" of our sightseeing adventures.  After taking our customary picture at the entrance sign (the kids were almost too cool in their shades to be photographed with us), we toured the Visitor Center, learning about how arches are formed.  We watched the movie and had our passport stamped.  Then it was on to drive some of the trails.  We saw:

The Three Gossips

Balanced Rock

Sheep Rock

...And Several Arches!

We knew that we couldn't stay long, but it was great to get a taste of this place and see enough to get excited about a return visit...some day.

By 11:00, we were leaving the park and heading for Grand Junction, Colorado, for lunch.  We ate at an IHOP (one of the lesser impressive meals on our trip) where the kids admitted that they were getting "sick" of fast food and just wanted to eat at home for awhile.  It took almost two weeks, but it finally happened!

With that, we resumed our eastward journey into the Rocky Mountains.  As we drove along I-70, we traveled alongside the Colorado River, the hidden "star" of the Grand Canyon.  We also drove through several tunnels and up winding mountain roads.  It was probably not a good idea to put Bethany in the back seat of the van, as she began to get car sick with all the twisty driving. (It was the road's fault - honest!) We stopped to get re-settled, and the kids took advantage of the detour to get their feet wet in the Colorado River.

In the middle of the afternoon, we drove into a whale of a storm somewhere west of Vail.  There was lightning, torrential downpours, and a temperature drop of 23 degrees.  Fortunately, we passed through it fairly quickly and kept going.

The only other snag we experienced was hitting the worst mess of construction we had seen on our trip.  Just after passing through the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnel area west of Denver, traffic came to a standstill, and then crawled for about 15 miles leading into Idaho Springs where tunnel work was being done.  It cost us over an hour in time.

When we finally reached Denver, we stopped at a Chipotle for supper, making Daniel happy that we had visited two of his favorite restaurants today.  (Katie was unhappy with this selection, however, so we stopped at a McDonald's for her in Longmont while we gassed up the van.)

We reached the Lee's home around 7:30 and were able to visit with Patti, Addison and Megan before turning in for the night.  Patti made us delicious chocolate chip cookies, and also offered us some frozen vanilla yogurt to make ice cream sandwiches out of them.  YUM!

It was nice to be back in a familiar setting, east of the Rockies, with just the Mississippi standing in our way.  (That, and about 1400 miles.)

Leaving Grand Canyon

It was time to leave the Grand Canyon, and it was a looong way home.  Rather than just return the way we came, we chose to strike a different path back to Alliance so that we could still see new things.

We got up Saturday morning, July 13, and finished packing and loading the van.  We checked out of Yavapai Lodge and headed east.  We took the Desert View Drive, going east from Grand Canyon Village, stopping at some of the overlooks along the way.

The canyon seemed especially wide at Grandview Point, site of an early copper mine.

Debbie especially enjoyed being able to see the Colorado River at Lipan Point.

We made a final stop in Grand Canyon National Park at the Desert Tower.  It gave us an opportunity to climb up and get an overview of a larger area at the east end of the park.  God certainly did an amazing job of creation with the Grand Canyon!

We said our good-byes to the Grand Canyon and headed to Tuba City for lunch.  (I was disappointed that there were no music stores there named, "Tuba City!")  Once again, Sonic was the place of choice for lunch.  We then continued on to Utah.  Along the way, we saw many fascinating rock formations.

We went through an area called Monument Valley which provided the backdrop for a lot of westerns.  

A town called "Mexican Hat" (see balanced rock above) had some interesting features, too!

We came across our first Arch, Wilson Arch, which Daniel and Bethany explored.

We also saw a hummingbird at Wilson Arch.

Upon reaching the city of Moab, we checked into our hotel for the night.  We ordered Pizza Hut in, and then took advantage of the swimming pool and fitness center.  We were ready for one final adventure the next day!