It's Like We Know What We Are Doing

Saturday, July 11th I broke Elias.  Again. I don't mean to do these things.  It just happens.  We go so hard for so long that I forget to stop and relax.  Not everything has to be done on a trip.  Not everything can be done.  So there we sit, at lunch at Famous Dave's right outside the gates at Cedar Point.  I look at Elias and he isn't saying anything.  And I knew before I even asked the question, "Are you done??" He was.  Then again, so was I. Would it have been different if we would have checked out of the hotel in time to have eaten breakfast with Mark and his family??  Maybe.  Would it have been different if we had gone to the Soak City side of Cedar Point versus just riding the rides??  Maybe.  But we didn't do these things. We quietly ate our food, walked back through the park to the exit, found the car, and began our drive home.  We didn't even have funnel cake. The trip ended with a bit of a whi...

Friday, July 10th For as much as we loved our hotel in Philadelphia , our hotel in Cleveland was a bit...meh.  But it was fine, I guess.  We kept being asked, "Why are you staying by the airport??"  Our answer, we got a $50  nightly rate on Hotwire.  That's why.  Our hotel for this leg of the trip is just a place to drop our crap and sleep.  The hotel was fine. This was our last full day on the road trip, so we had to do it up right.  We met one of my stations for breakfast around the corner from our first real stop of the day.  We were going to The Christmas Story House . We had actually planned to visit the house two years ago around the holidays.  Elias and I were all set to take a road trip to Cleveland for a Bears' game.  The trip ended up being a bust on the actual day we were going to leave, because it was December.  In the Midwest.  A crazy snowstorm descended upon us and we were concerned about driving....

Thursday, July 9th Normally, I tell the story of the whole day of travel (whether you want to hear it or not).  But for two reasons today, I'm not going to do that. I mean, we drove from Philadelphia to Cleveland.  So, for six hours, we were in the car, stopping at rest stops and fiddling with the iPod for another music choice.  The reality was this day was mostly boring.  But it was designed to be boring. The real reason I am not going on and on about the journey is because of the stop we made.  And being silly or glib about the day as a whole feels wrong. We visited the Flight 93 Memorial. As we drove to Philadelphia a few days ago, we saw the exit for the memorial on the highway.  Until that exact moment, it didn't occur to me that we were even in the neighborhood.  Or even that there was a memorial.  Plus, we were too tired from the drive that we didn't want to divert on that trip.  But we banked the idea in our memory....

Wednesday, July 8th It is well known that Elias and I are amusement park people.  We may not go on the super thrilling rides, but we like going on twirly rides and eating all of the funnel cake.  So when we were planning out our trip in Philadelphia, we knew we'd have to make a visit to Dorney Park. Dorney Park is located just outside of Allentown, PA, less than an hour from Philadelphia.  It opened in the late 1800's when Solomon Dorney would fish for trout on his property.  Trout was abundant on his property, so he began selling his catch to people who were passing through.  As the years went on, people would come from far and wide to buy Dorney's trout and make a day of it.  Dorney began updating his property to give visitors something else to do.  By the 1880's, Dorney's park had added a small zoo, mechanical rides, and a park.  I don't know if it was the first amusement park, but it had to be one of them. We left Philadelphia a l...