America 250- Friday, June 26, 2026

      Scott loves observing the anniversaries of historical events, and this year is a tremendously significant one.  It is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Scott couldn't let that one go unnoticed.  He has already been to a number of the Revolutionary War's 250th anniversaries, and he certainly wanted to make this one.  Of course, it comes right at the start of our summer vacation, so we built our big summer trip around it.  The highlights will include the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Sullivan's Island in Charleston, SC, which happened the week before, a visit to Colonial Williamsburg, VA, and the climax of the week in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July itself.  That's the plan anyway, with time for pools and beaches, shopping and other things in between the history.

     This morning was Scott and Julie's last day of school, so they had to go in for the last meetings of the year.  We dropped Abby off at the grandparents for half a day and dropped 14 week old Buttercup for her first stay at the pet spa and went in to school for our half-days.  

     Scott was sad to see Cathy W. retire.  She has been a big part of our family events since Scott started working there.  She was there when we first brought Anna off of the plane from Russia and was there over twenty years later when that little girl got married.  Today was  Cathy's last day.

     Julie and Abby picked Scott up at his school and we were on the road by noon.  It's over 13 hours to Charleston, where we have reservations for Saturday night, but we didn't have firm plans for where we were going to stop tonight.  It was planned to be our longest day of driving for this trip, and we hoped to get as many hours in as we could so we might be able to do a few things in Charleston tomorrow,  We stopped at McDonald's in Erie, PA, for a late lunch, and Abby enjoyed playing in the Play Place for a while.  You don't see many of those anymore.  We drove on to about half-way through West Virginia when we stopped for a late dinner at a Shoney's.  

     Our best case scenario was to drive far enough into North Carolina to only have 4 hours to drive tomorrow, but by the time we were getting to Wytheville, VA, it was after 11:00 and we decided to call it a day. 

 

Cleveland and Mesopotamia, Ohio- Monday, April 6, 2026

 

     We were awakened by a frantic call from Anna this morning.  She was at Wyatt's daycare, but no one else was there.  We soon discovered that the daycare was closed in observance of Easter, and we had to help Anna make alternate plans for Wyatt.  She ended up taking him to Julie' folks, who were happy to have him, but who also were having some windows installed today.  Anna was certainly late for work after dropping him off.  We were sorry not to be able to help.  Anna had changed her plans to let us take this little trip.  If we had been there, we would have been the ones dropping him off and we certainly would have had an easy time pivoting and taking him for the day instead.  But we were over three hours away. 

     For as really nice as this hotel was, we were disappointed that the pool was closed and Abby wasn't going to get to swim at all.  The breakfast area was impressive.  A chef prepared omelets and other items and the dining was in the spacious 8-story atrium in the center of the hotel.  Scott thought the food was a little sub-par, but he was impressed that Diet Pepsi was available as a beverage.

      We headed to the West Side Market, which was our main reason for this trip.  It's the day after Easter and Dyngus Day is a thing on this side of Cleveland too.  Even so, the market was quite empty, especially since we were used to seeing it on busy weekends.  Many of the booths were closed, but more than half were open and we had enough to look at.  We got "peach bacon" and pork belly, some calzones, spaetzle and some other things.  On our way out, one of the produce vendors was a real salesman and talked Julie into some of his post-Easter sales and she bought grapes, berries, spinach, onions, cucumbers, asparagus some garlic, and few and other things.  

     We then headed to the Amish area of Mesopotamia, Ohio, and went to the End of the Commons General Store.  We've visited here before with Julie's parents.  We got some goodies here, including licorice candy, stick and jelly beans for Julie and some stuff to make fried chicken.  We got some spice jelly candy for Julie's dad to thank him for watching Wyatt.  The store is supposed to be famous for their fry pies, but we didn't get any.  Abby picked out a bag full of marbles.  Julie enjoyed the quirky old time music they had playing.  It was a fun stop, but we needed to head for home.  Not only did we have to rescue Wyatt but Emma has to work the overnight shift tonight.