The weekend started Friday afternoon at my office, where we ended the work day early for some Friday afternoon beers and Pictionary! Yes, that’s how we do it. And we take Pictionary VERY seriously in my office. Case in point – the smack talk that was going down even early on in the week: (photo courtesy of @sarah_lack)

After Pictionary, I met up with B and we headed to Whiskey Island for a work event he had – dinner, beach volleyball, and drinks on Wendy Park! It would’ve been a great event – if it hadn’t started POURING rain, blowing wind, and thundering and lightning the second we got there. Literally the second we got there, we had to hide under the food tent and wait nearly an hour for the rain to stop. Luckily I was able to create a makeshift rain coat, and the party continued through the night as the rain cleared up.

Rain gear?

Saturday morning, it was still raining so B and I got in a quick morning work out at the gym. Post-workout it started to clear up so we headed to the driving range to hit a few balls. I’ve only golfed twice before, but it was still nice to enjoy the sunshine and laugh at my still nonexistent skills. After golf, we of course enjoyed some soft serve (seriously, how can you not get ice cream after going to a driving range on a summer day?).

I kind of look like I know what I’m doing …?

Saturday afternoon, B and I met up with Dave and Anson for the Cleveland Wine Festival! Held at Voinovich Park, and sponsored by Giant Eagle, the festival features 200 international wines, food, music and 10 tastings. What a fun way to spend a beautiful evening! We sipped wine from so many great vendors (my favorite non-Ohio wines were Chateau St. Michelle and Francis Coppola) and enjoyed a fun live band. After closing down the wine festival we headed over to Map Room for some post-wine tasting beers and pizza.

Sunset over Lake Erie at Cleveland Wine Festival … shortly after this photo a guy jumped into the lake

Photo opp at Chateau Ste. Michelle’s booth!

Sunday was pretty leisurely. I slept in while B played softball, and hit the gym for a workout while catching up on past episodes of Luther on the iPad. After working out, we headed to Edgewater Park to catch up on some reading and some rays for most of the afternoon. It was a great day and it seemed everyone was out at the park – swimming, boating flying kites, and having picnics.

Another day on Lake Erie

Sunday night we joined B’s family out for dinner at Washington Place, a great restaurant in Little Italy – formerly the Baricelli Inn. B’s grandmother was treating everyone to a dinner out – and the food was amazing! The bread (supposedly from Stone Oven) was SO good, and we ordered mussels, a cheese plate and pierogies for appetizers. I ordered the scallops with black rice (I subbed quinoa) for dinner – which was perfectly cooked – and B and  I split the Presti’s donut bread pudding for dessert (yes, I even convinced B to join me in dessert. There’s a first for everything – and usually that first involves donuts and bread pudding!). It was the perfect end to my last weekend in July …  are you ready for August?

Thunderbirds in formation.

Beginning back in 1929 with the Cleveland National Air Races, air shows have become a summer holiday weekend event for greater Clevelanders.  This year’s Cleveland National Air Show will once again feature the United States Air Force Thunderbirds.  Air show excitement begins this week as many performers, including the Thunderbirds begin practices and fly-byes along the lakefront throughout the week, thrilling downtown workers and shoppers with their low altitude maneuvers.

Thunderbird pair.

During the actual air show there are many different places to get a good view of the show.  The best venue, of course, is the show itself at Burke Lakefront Airport, but the deck of the Steamship William G. Mather, where these shots were taken, Wendy Park, Edgewater Park, the hills along the Memorial Shoreway and many other locations offer great views and photographic opportunities.  Wherever you shoot the airshow from, it’s hard not to get some exciting images of all sorts of aircraft, paratroopers, and people in general!

By June/July 2010, I had published Well Considered and was thinking about writing my next book. This one would be a young adult novel set in the area where I was a young adult, just as my first two books had settings I had personally experienced. I decided to make a research trip to Cleveland/Rocky River, and once again, the end of June/beginning of July was a convenient time frame. After that trip, I wrote my most popular blog post of 2010:  ”A Mallard on the Cuyahoga,” http://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/a-mallard-on-the-cuyahoga/.

Now in 2011, I needed to return to Cleveland to check some details for the writing I’ve been doing this year. Again the most convenient time was over July 4 and our friends’ anniversary.  In Cleveland, we toured the industrial flats along the Cuyahoga River by car and saw the massive Arcelor-Mittal steel mill (formerly owned by Republic Steel and LTV). Yes, they still make steel in Cleveland. Ore boats two football fields long, sixty feet wide, rising sixty feet or more above the water still ply the curvy Cuyahoga and deliver ore that the mill makes into rolls of sheet steel used to make car bodies and appliances. And despite the heavy industry, this year I saw a great blue heron fishing by the river – the same river on which the Cleveland Rowing Foundation has been holding its Head of the Cuyahoga (HOTC) Regatta since 1996.

Also in Cleveland, we experienced the trendy Tremont part of downtown for the first time, dining on orzo with eggplant, artichokes, and hearts of palm, and then drove by the Christmas Story House — you know, “The Christmas Story” — not the Biblical one, but the one that runs 24 hours a day on television at Christmas time, when we get to plead, “Don’t put your tongue on the flagpole!”  and “You’re going to shoot your eye out.” Downtown we climbed all over the William G. Mather ore freighter surrounded by breath-taking views of Lake Erie and the lakefront development– Great Lakes Science Museum, I.M. Pei’s stunning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame structure, Cleveland Browns Stadium, etc., with the Cleveland skyline in the background. All along the lake were marinas filled with thousands of pleasure boats. Sailboats raced on the lake. Seagulls flew everywhere, squealing, squawking and laughing. Edgewater Park and Wendy Park downtown bounced with young picnickers, and woodsy Rocky River Reservation was full of bikers and joggers. Cleveland is one of America’s beautiful, lively cities.

Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. I love the zoo because it makes me remember my childhood. And anyone who knows me even a little knows that I enjoy remembering my childhood. I’m almost obsessively nostalgic for the past, while somehow always wanting to move on. I took classes at the zoo when I was little. I hiked around with my little pink fanny pack and waved to the elephants and pygmy hippopotamuses. Now the elephants are being housed at the Columbus Zoo while the Metroparks build their new habitat, and the pygmies are god knows where, but I still enjoy looking at all the animals that I once loved. Something about zoos makes me instantly revert to childhood. Plus, the zoo is free on Mondays for Cuyahoga County and Hinckley Township residents. You can’t beat free.

Yellow Bridges. I recently went to Pittsburgh for the first time despite the fact that it’s only two and half hours away. I had already Bedroom Traveled there, so I pretty much knew what to expect. But that’s not quite the same thing, now is it? I really liked it there, but I was pretty much completely entranced by the yellow bridges. I don’t know why they are yellow. Actually, if anyone has any insight into this I wouldn’t mind knowing. But, in a lot of ways I don’t particularly care, because I love them regardless. And, since the city is located around three rivers it’s not surprising that it has a lot of bridges. I like bridges in general, slightly strangely colored ones are just a plus.

Industrial Wastelands. I love this. I really love this. The first time I saw it I stared out the car window gaping because I thought it was just outrageously beautiful. The problem, if you can call it that, is that I don’t have any idea what this used to be. It’s clear that it was a building of some sort, at some point, and that it was subsequently torn down. All that’s left are some of the concrete supports with the metal pole beams twisting out from them. They look like trees, so incredibly organic without it being so at all, just sitting in their vacant lot. I would love it if it could stay there forever as a monument to, probably mundane, things in the past that I didn’t even know about, but I know that eventually it will disappear and all that will be left are my photographs.

The Secret Garden at Stan Hywet Hall. I think the proper name for this is the Reflecting Pool, but it lives behind four stone walls that you can’t see properly in the photo. I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett‘s novel when I was little. I mean… really loved that book until I planted myself a garden and wished my name was as boring as “Mary”. I rode my bike to look at roses and overgrown pieces of planted earth. I read it like five times in a year. I also love touring old houses. So when I was little my dad told me that this one had a Secret Garden and I wanted to go. And I’ve never really forgotten that.

Burg Eltz. I’ve never been to this medieval castle on the Moselle River in Germany, but I desperately want to. I saw this for the first time at some point in the winter, when I was having a bit of a depressed time, and all I could think was to ask the question of how I could be sad in a world where something like that could exist. And that’s true. There’s something so completely amazing about this castle built up on a hill and then just sort of… up itself. I’ve seen Neuschwanstein Castle, which was completely beautiful and completely impressive, and sort of like this one, but this seems more… authentic. Not surprising maybe since King Ludwig II didn’t go bankrupt building Burg Eltz.

Wendy Park. If someone was to ask me where my favorite place in Cleveland is I’d say, hands down, Wendy Park on Whiskey Island. I love it because it’s sort of the best of both worlds. When you enter Wendy Park, through Whiskey Island Marina, you can drive one of two ways. One goes towards the lake and a grassy knoll where you can spread out a blanket and enjoy the boats coming and going from the nearby Marina. You can see the lighthouses and listen to the water lapping against the shore. But if you drive the other direction you get to the Cuyahoga River where you have a splendid view of the city from below. And bridges. And if you walk a bit out towards the lake, along the river, you get to the crumbling remains of the old Coast Guard station, which is gorgeous in it’s own right.

Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. I have never been here. In fact I know very little about this town except that it’s located in what used to be Bohemia and that it’s name translates to Carlsbad in English. But, it’s beautiful. I don’t even remember where I was Bedroom Traveling when I discovered this photograph but it made me want to see the place in person. Which, in my opinion, is the reason for photographs in the first place. I love the way it climbs, one building seemingly on top of the other. And I love the colors. And how you can immediately tell it’s in Eastern Central Europe.

Gibraltar. I’ve never before really given Gibraltar that much thought. I knew it existed of course. I knew about the Barbary Apes. I knew about the Rock. But, apart from that it was just a place that existed in the world that I’d never really thought about before. Stupidly enough, the reason I became interested was because of how it was described in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Gibraltar is an English territory located at the very tip of Spain and just across the straight from Morocco, and because of that it’s infused with the cultures of all of them. It’s an English village away from England. And, of course it’s beautiful. The Rock of Gibraltar is ridiculously dramatic, the sort of thing you’d long to see at sunset for it to reach it’s full potential. Of course, because of it’s territory status and location it’s often contested between England and Spain, but it’s said the peninsula will belong to England so long as it’s inhabited by those Barbary Apes. Which is why Winston Churchill infused the place when it started to run out.

Rory Williams. In my previous installment I included Doctor Who‘s Amy Pond as one of the things that makes me happy, so I figured it would only be appropriate to add in her boyfriend. Who I want to steal. I think, were I drawing up my TV Boyfriends now he would probably be on this list (unsurprisingly that list sort of changes), though it’s really, honestly, not immediately easy to see why. Initially it seems as if Rory isn’t going to be much more to the series other than playing the Baxter, but, pleasantly, that’s really not the case. When we first meet him he’s a little bit bumbling, nervous and meek, but by the time we see him again (two years from when we saw him initially) he’s turned rather formidable. Plus, he’s loyal and loves Amy enough to guard her for two thousand years (don’t ask), which is really sort of cute. But most importantly, he’s pretty ridiculous. Which in my case equals swoon.

Edgewater Park (photo by Jeff Greenberg)

Family vacations, romantic getaways, fishing excursions, the shores of a little ocean like Lake Erie attract our holidays and weekends with great new memories you hold onto for a lifetime.

“Growing up on the shores of a Great Lake was pretty exciting as a child,” says Carol G. Ward, park naturalist at Cleveland Lakefront State Park. “My parents frequently planned excursions to the shores of Lake Erie. We would go there to picnic, fish or swim at the beach.

As the smallest, shallowest and southernmost of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie’s big blue waves create a number of natural playgrounds like Wendy Park, Edgewater Park, Gordon Park and Wildwood State Park. Right in the heart of the city, Cleveland Lakefront State Park provides urbanites natural relief with sandy beaches back dropped by a metropolitan skyline and tree-lined picnic areas mixed with panoramic views of Cleveland and the Erie shoreline.

“Cleveland Lakefront State Park offers the opportunity to reconnect with nature, the outdoors and your family,” says Ward. In late spring or early summer, the new Cleveland Lakefront Exploration Station will open. “The Cleveland Lakefront nature center will have activity stations and exhibits on the Great Lakes, Lake Erie and aquatic ecosystems.

Divided into upper and lower areas connected by a paved multipurpose path, Edgewater Park is an activity center regularly populated by kite clubs, surfers, company picnics and family and friends soaking in the sun. Upper Edgewater features a renovated pavilion that can be reserved (866.644.6727), playground equipment and the oldest monument in Cleveland. Lower Edgewater offers a 900-foot swimming beach with two picnic shelters (available on a first come, first served basis) and a concession facility. The nearby fishing pier provides access for anglers and a concession where food and bait can be purchased. Boat launch ramps offer one of the few boating access points on the west side of the city at the Edgewater Marina.

From Edgewater, visitors can take a nine-mile Cleveland Lakefront Bike Trail that traces the Erie shoreline along Cleveland’s Lakeshore Boulevard, providing access to Gordon Park (six boat ramps, picnic area and park office), Euclid Beach (a 650-foot swimming beach with shaded outdoor eating areas) and Villa Angela Park (a 900-foot swimming beach and scenic boardwalk). Dike 14, near Gordon Park, is a reclaimed dredge site that has grown into a beautiful nature preserve, and has been designated as an Important Bird Area by Audubon Ohio.

A little further down the bike trail you’ll find Wildwood Park and Marina — a busy warm weather destination for water sports. Its breakwalls offer great fishing access on Lake Erie, as well as access to Euclid Creek, which is known for its coho salmon in the spring. There is a six-lane boat launch ramp at Wildwood and a marina that offers gasoline and boating gear, transient and seasonal docks, food, fishing licenses, fishing charters and fish cleaning. There is also a scuba diving concession that offers charters and air tanks, kayak rental and a nice little beach where jet skiers can launch their personal watercraft.

But if beaches are your thing, make sure you travel east to Headlands Beach — the biggest and busiest stretch of Lake Erie sand in Northeast Ohio. Each year two million visitors visit its mile of beach and shoreline bordered by two nature preserves. In addition to great swimming and sunbathing, you can also enjoy wind surfing, jet skiing and beach volleyball. For the mellower crowd, this area is ideal for beachcombing, birding and lakeside picnics. The dunes and unusual plants here are more typical of the Atlantic Coast than the Midwest. It’s the perfect locale to explore a spring vacation and another ideal opportunity to create a few new memories recalling the majesty and magnetism of Lake Erie.

“Had it not been for my experiences at the park as a child, I would not have the skills and knowledge today to do my job,” says Ward. “I consider it a real honor to work at these parks. Not only do I get to continue to enjoy the parks of my youth and my parents and grandparents, but now I get to share them with new generations of explorers.” - Submitted by guest blogger Keith Gribbons