The Events of Friday, September 24, 2010

          When I was little, hearing about my mom and her childhood in “the East” was a big deal to me. It seemed so far away, and so historic. It was in storybooks and it seemed almost like a fairyland to me. It was so old, it was unreal! But today we went to Pennsylvania and New York! Both of those states are truly east. It is so cool. All the old houses and mansions that we have seen are fascinating, and the schools are so fancy! But I’ll get into that later. Let’s start at the beginning.

          We woke up in a Walmart parking lot in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, after a restless night of sleep. Last night we had stayed up late to attend a Cleveland symphony concert. In addition, the Walmart parking lot was noisy and well-lit, so we did not have an easy time going to sleep. After breakfast we started driving north, towards Erie, Pennsylvania where my mom’s dad, my Grandpa John, had grown up. When we got there we drove to Presque Isle State Park looking for a picturesque place to eat lunch. Presque means “almost perfect” in French, implying that this is an almost perfect isle. In fact, it isn’t an island; it is attached to the mainland with a tiny string of land so it is actually a peninsula jutting into Lake Erie. The beach that we decided to stop on for lunch, Beach #6, happened to be the same one that my grandpa had lifeguarded as a teenager and college student. The sign said no swimming, so we just waded. Originally trying to prevent getting our shorts and shirts wet, we waded carefully to a breaker and climbed around a little on the rocks, enjoying the cooling spray from the waves crashing on the breaker. It was 93° with a very high humidity, but the wind on the beach and the cool water made for a very pleasant temperature. On the way back from the breaker, we all promptly fell in the water entirely by accident. Caitlin mistook the deepness of the water and got her shorts wet, and I did the same. Then Caitlin bumped Lindsey causing her to fall in the water, and Ben simply gave in to the water and sank into the sand. Now fully wet from head to toe, we waded to shore. Ben was kind and gave Lindsey the shirt off his back as her wet T-shirt had become see-through. After that, we walked along the shoreline, with the kids in the water and our sensible parents on land. We tried not to lose our footing and be accused of swimming, but we couldn’t always keep true to that. We experienced many high waves, and I, as the shortest, was always the first to fall in. Many times big waves knocked me over and there was a frantic scramble to get myself up before the next big wave came, and pulled me under. This was not successful many times, causing me to be thoroughly sopped and everybody else almost as sopped. By the end of this I was extremely tired, and did not have any more energy. In the beach restrooms, we hosed our sandy bodies down, changed into new clothes and went back to the RV for lunch. Ben later stated that this was his new favorite part of the trip.

          After lunch, it was time to see a little of Grandpa John history. We drove on the street where his house was, but we couldn’t figure out which house was his. All of the houses on that street all looked so old and quaint, and we exclaimed over each one. We drove by his high school, and gaped over how fancy it was. It was this big marble building, with big marble pillars and signs in Latin engraved over the door. This was nothing like our dirty, outdoor high schools in California, this was a palace! After that, we had planned to visit a historic mansion, but driving by all these big, fancy homes, we couldn’t figure out which was the mansion we were seeking. Finally we found it and went inside. However, we found they would not honor the family tour price listed in the AAA tour book, and decided not to take the tour.

          We drove towards upstate New York and our campsite at Evangola State Park. Our campsite backed up to a cliff overlooking Lake Erie. It was beautiful to hear the waves crashing and the wind off the lake rustling through the trees. We hung our wet and sandy clothes to dry and de-sand and set about cleaning ourselves up as well. Unfortunately, the showers were rather dirty and buggy. Once clean we enjoyed a lovely dinner of rotisserie chicken. After dinner, we watched the special features in our new A Christmas Story DVD, and were quite amused with all the grown-up actors’ account of their childhood acting days and their memories of Christmases past. Finally, we fell asleep to the sound of waves lapping against the shore of Lake Erie.