To The Arctic and Beyond!

Tomorrow I am leaving for an amazing, interesting vacation.

Kevin and I are driving to NYC to board a plane to London, to take a two week Trans-Atlantic cruise from London to NYC.

We will be visiting Southampton, Cornwall, Dublin, Belfast, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland.

We have seven days at sea to enjoy relaxing, and seven cities to explore.

I can't wait to meet the Eskimos in Greenland!

:)

Polished and Perfect in Huron

There was a little (but great) wood boat show last weekend in Huron, OH which is near Sandusky. My family has a Lyman from the 60's that we are trying to sell, so we brought it up there, put it on display, and enjoyed looking at the other boats. It has spent it's life in Georgian Bay in Ontario, so it was kind of weird to see it here.

Lyman was a company in the Sandusky area for many years (starting in the 20's), and they only made wood boats. Similar to Chris Crafts, which I think were more popular. I used to make fun of my dad for how perfect the "Chuck Full" was after it was restored. No shoes on the boat, don't touch the varnish, etc. You know what? Everyone else at the show was the same way! And I will say- the older I get, the more I appreciate these boats and love them. Too bad I would be way to scared to drive one of them or dock one of them. I am literally a horrible boat docker.

Enjoy some photos from our afternoon!

This is pretty much my dream boat. It took three years to restore it!

Springfield, IL

The Illinois State Fair is something else, let me tell you. I have only been to our little county fairs here in Ohio. This was bigger. Way bigger.

A few people in Kevin's family provide food services for fairs, so we went to go visit them. It was actually really interesting to see how the "back end" of the fair works. I always love seeing the behind the scenes side of anything.

I ate enough fried food for a year.

We spent about 10 hours there on Sunday, and it was H-O-T. I was fine in the shade, but once the sun hit I was like the Wicked Witch of the West. Melting. I was probably better off though because it made me not want to eat as much.

The best half hour of that day was when Kevin and I decided to visit the beer tent where they had a band playing. The people dancing were the best entertainment ever! I swear, one woman had on my Easter dress from 1992 with black ankle boots, and another dude had sweatbands on his wrists as part of his dancing ensemble. It was great.

As much fun as I had hanging out with people, I must say that I actually prefer our little county fair to the state fair. I was hoping for baking contests and flower arrangements, but it was so much bigger than that. These people are serious about their cows and sheep!

We were going to try and drive back to Cleveland that night, but we only made it as far as Indiana. We stayed in a beautiful Days Inn for the night before we headed back home.

Midwest Road Trip

Last week and weekend, Kevin and I went on a little road trip adventure. We have driven SO MUCH this summer it's crazy. A few trips to NC, a few trips to Canada, NYC, Ithaca. And have I even mentioned that neither of us have air conditioning in our cars? I've adjusted, but not so much last week on our trip. The average temperature was like 95.

Anyway, we left on a Wednesday, and were home on a Monday. In that time, we drove from Cleveland to Chicago to Springfield (IL) to St. Louis back to Springfield back to Cleveland. That is a grand total of almost 1,400 miles in five days. Which I drove zero of. And, we only stayed in a hotel one night! Thanks friends and family. :)

I was able to visit both of my college roommates, and Kevin was able to see his brother and a lot of his aunts, uncles and cousins.

Everything about the trip was perfect, until the very end. We were a few exits away from home, and the freeway was shut down due to a gas truck dumping over. Of course we were ON the freeway when this happened (they quickly blocked off all of the on ramps to avoid more cars backing up). I of course had decided to drink coffee and water, and was just dying sitting in the car, and we were extremely low on gas. The police started turning everyone around to head in the opposite direction one by one to get us off the closed road. It took us an extra two hours to get home, and I can now say that I have used the side of 271N as a bathroom.

St. Louis, MO

One of our stops on our little trip was in St. Louis. Kevin's brother lives there, so we spent a few days hanging out with him. We didn't really have anything planned for Saturday afternoon, so we decided to go to the Anheuser Busch factory. The tours are free, and you get to sample beer after the tour is over. I think Kevin and his brother have done this about 50 times (exaggerating, but still) but they were happy to go back. The tour starts by showing you the horses and the stables that they live in, which are absolutely gorgeous. Those horses live better than we do. And they had the little Dalmatian dogs there too!

Then it continued out to show us how beer was made and bottled. I could not get over how beautiful the factory was! Unfortunately the bottling section was closed down for maintenance the day we were there, but I can picture what it would look like in action thanks to Laverne and Shirley.

We actually did the tour twice because Kevin saw that we could go to beer school for $10 and that just had to happen. We even got diplomas. The guys swear that they are going to frame them, even though they don't have their college diplomas framed. So half way through the first tour we left and went to the free beer drinking room, then to beer school, then did the whole tour and went back to the free beer room. All in all, we spent about 5 hours there for a tour that was only supposed to last 45 minutes! The one thing I could not get over was how many kids there were there. I know it's free and it's a Saturday, but come on. Lots of crying and boredom going on there after the horses.

Kevin doesn't like having his picture taken. I promise, he was having fun.

Ithaca, NY

A few weekends ago, Kevin and I drove to Ithaca, NY for a wedding (his friend from college). If I could even tell you how much we have driven this summer... you have no idea. It was about a 7 hour drive, and I was looking forward it it because I had actually never been to Ithaca.


It was a cute, small college town with lots of hills that had tons of hippies! Seriously, I don't get it. You are like 20 years old, it's 2010, and you're white. Why do you have on tie dye driving a VW bus with dreadlocks and smell gross? And I don't have a job, so I'm not going to throw money in your guitar case when I have to step over it to get to lunch. Just sayin'. We did eat at some great independent restaurants though.


The wedding was totally awesome. The girl used to be an event planner in NYC, so every detail was perfect. The hotel was great, and we knew where to be when, and how we were getting there for everything going on because of her organizational skills. Loved it. We ate, drank, danced (ok, maybe Kevin didn't, but I did) and the partied continued until 6am. I was asleep LONG before that, but it just goes to show how much fun everyone had!