My friend Lisa, from CA, braved the midwest frontier and ventured forth to visit me this week. She was here for five glorious days. We had a great time and we even managed to fill three whole days with things to do. LOL, who knew there was so much to entertain us in Ohio. There are even things we didn’t get to, I was shocked.
Since this was really my first foray into Ohio tourist activities we went to Borders to see if there was a travel book or other tourist info for the area, we found nothing. But after scouring the internet we found interesting sites beyond the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame and Football Hall of Fame, including culinary delights. I think we pretty much ate our way through the state. That is the great Ohio activity.
We ended her first day in Ohio with a trip to the $1 Theatre to see The Bucket List, which was surprisingly boring. I thought for sure with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson it would be good, but not so much. The best part was the final 15 minutes. Very disappointing.
Our culinary highlight of the day was a trip to Quaker Steak & Lube for the best wings on the planet. We tried four different sauces: Premium Garlic, Thai-R-Tracker, Asian Sesame and Louisiana Licker. We did not go for the atomic sauce you need to sign a waiver to try.
Our culinary highlight of day 2 came early, a breakfast at Cracker Barrel. The pancakes are a must have with real maple syrup. Our next stop was in Akron to visit Stan Hywet Hall, the former home of the Sieberlings (founder of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company). It was spectacular. The home and grounds, built to resemble an English country estate, were amazing and beautiful. They were even having a vintage 1840s baseball game going on. Everyone was yelling, “huzzah.” Beyond that I have no idea what the rule difference is, but they looked cute in their knickers.
We then high-tailed it to Cleveland to try and get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before it closed. While we made the trip in only 30 minutes it was only about an hour before they closed. So we decided the hefty $22 was too much to pay for such a short period of time. We did get to walk around the lobby and store. Having been there before I knew Lisa wasn’t missing much, but sometimes you have to see for yourself that it isn’t worth it. She was a little disappointed. We did get to tour a bit of the lakefront and see the Browns stadium. We were both amazed at how brown the lake water is.
We had some time to kill so we decided to take advantage of the Garmin Nuvi and see what it recommended in the area. We were shocked to discover that the Memphis Pink Palace was only 1.6 miles from where we were. Even though the associated phone number had a 901 area code I decided to check it out anyway. We ended up in a very unsavory part of Cleveland. It seems that the fine Garmin programmers and their check systems missed that the zip code was wrong. Then Lisa saw that the there was a Dolly Madison bakery nearby. She was excited to see if they had zingers. But instead Garmin took us to an empty lot. So sad. The lesson is you can never fully trust your GPS, always doublecheck.
Day two we went to Amish Country. It was actually a lot of fun. Our first stop was The Amish Door for a delicious country lunch. Then we visited Wendell August, a tin forging workshop. We even got the chance to hammer out our frustrations on a sample.
No trip to the Amish country is complete without a visit toYoder’s Amish Experience. We got to take a tour of a real Amish home, ride in a real Amish buggy, and see how a real Amish farm works. We came to the conclusion that for a culture that wants to stay away from the world they’re very fond of entertaining it and selling it baked goods. I have to say the culinary highlight of the day were the cookies and cakes made by Rachel at the Amish Experience. They were so good.
Day three: We thought about heading back to Cleveland but honestly there is not a whole lot to do there. We found a cultural garden but it turned out each nationality was only represented by a rock, not a full garden or even a representation of the plants of that country. So not that festive. Instead we went back to Amish country to visit a victorian house museum in Millersburg, Coblentz chocolate factory and Heini’s Cheese chalet. It was another delightful day in the country. We couldn’t have had better weather. There were actual blue skies and it was sunny. A rare day in Ohio indeed.
The culinary highlight was not our lunch at the Millerburg Hotel. It was built in 1847 and the food was as tasteful as if it had been made then. Not good. The culinary highlight of the day was at Coblentz and the most delicious buckeyes. Mmmm tasty. Our day in the country was great but tiring, who knew fresh air was so exhausting.
Lisa left on Wednesday morning. We laughed a lot, saw a lot and it was a great visit. It was nice to have a friend in Ohio.
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