August 11- Erie, PA

That’s right. Barely two weeks after returning from Europe, we’re off again. We barely have had time to catch our breath and recover from the jet lag. This time we’re headed west and north to Sault-Saint-Marie for Brian and Jenny’s wedding .

The original plan was to leave on Wednesday, but Julie has been saying that she’d like to go to Erie, Pa., sometime this summer in order to do back-to-school shopping for the girls. There’s no sales tax on clothes in Pennsylvania. Scott suggested we leave a day early and head through Erie on our way to Michigan.

Julie had a meeting at her school that she couldn’t get out of, but that was over by 10:00. The car was basically packed and ready to go. We let the girls put the seats down to make a big bed out of the back and had bought about a half dozen new DVDs that they didn’t know about for the trip. We were on the road by 11:00.

Our first stop in Erie was the Maritime Museum. Scott was excited about seeing the Brig Niagara from the War of 1812, but she was not in port. The recent storms have delayed her return from one of her occasional cruises, and she won’t be back until Wednesday. We went into the museum anyway. Although Scott and Julie have visited the ship a long time ago, the museum was completely new to us. The exhibits are quite good, and Scott was impressed by many of them. A film about the Battle of Lake Erie uses an innovative technique. Side-by-side screens show a British view and an American view of the battle simultaneously. Perhaps most intriguing, a portion of the hull of the Lawrence has been built and shot with cannonballs. A television crew taped the live-fire experiment and the camera angles clearly show the damage that a cannonball can cause to a wooden ship. As expected, the hail of splinters is what really messes up the gun crews. Scott was looking forward to arranging a visit for the middle schoolers in his War of 1812 Club, but the person he needs to talk to was out. The ship alone would be worth a day trip to Erie, but the museum made him even more excited to get the students here.

We went to the Millcreek Mall and began several hours of shopping. Anna and Emma both got a few new outfits, and they picked them out themselves. We had to limit Anna’s pinks though. Julie had her eye out for something new to wear to the wedding, but she wasn’t able to find anything. Scott used to think that “shop till you drop” was just an expression, but we came close to it today. After dinner at the food court (at the place that Emma remembered as the place she got sick last Easter) we wrapped it up and continued our drive.

We made it into Ohio, where we stopped for the night at a place called Mentor. We found a room in a hotel with a pool, and the girls were happy for that. Even though it was late, we let them go swimming for a while.