Surprise, surprise.. Ricky was up at 5am this morning, while Jillian slept in till 8. While roaming the campsite Ricky found a weird church tower. A sign on the door read “This room is for private prayer and meditation, please use it alone”. He opened the door to find only a chair, table, and bible. Creepy. After getting ourselves together, we set off for a 1 hour drive to Cleveland. As we drove we rocked some Kid Cudi, obviously. Parking in this city was easy and cheep… lots of lots (holy crap, lots of lots..HAHA!). 4$ to park all day. Before we set out on the road trip, the plan was to find parking garages in cities to use as hotels. However- this is not panning out. The clearance at most garages is about 6′ – 6″ to 6′ – 9″ and the van = 7′ – 3/4″. ugh. First, we hit up the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was pretty sweet. Everyone knows this place is amazing, so we don’t have to go into great detail about what was there- artifacts, famous clothing, cool music facts, etc… But the awesome thing was (to Jillian, anyway) that you could tell that everyone there was moved by music. People of all ages, colors, shapes, sizes had to contain urges to break out in dance… Old ladies is pimps too, shoot. The downfall to this place is there’s no photography. Bogus. Next was a little city walk to get a feel for the Cleve… we noticed there’s not a lot of people there. There’s skyscrapers and wide streets with no cars on them. You could cross the street anywhere at anytime, and yet people were still waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change. We don’t understand why Cleveland is so empty.. maybe they evacuated the Great Lakes due to Hurricane Irene?? We would actually like to start a revolution and move us and ALL of our friends from all over to Cleveland. We would run that shit. Except in the winter we would leave. There’s lots of cool architecture, but the people aren’t used to tourists so when you take pictures of things they look at you confused, like you’re some kind of idiot. Even though the Soldiers and Sailors monument was one of the coolest monuments we’ve ever seen. Ricky was really diggin it. After checking out downtown, we headed to a highly anticipated attraction. The ACTUAL house used in the filming of the Christmas Story. It’s now a living and breathing museum dedicated to the classic movie… BUT, we got there too late and could only view it from the outside… at least the fra-gee-lay lamp was in the window. After a short photo shoot, we were up in the air about our plans for the night. After a little contemplation and a lot of ipad-ing, we decided to head out west and find a spot on the lake closer to Toledo. We ended up on a little peninsula jetting out into Lake Erie just as the sun was setting. We parked at one of the beaches and watched the sunset. After that, we drove to the tip of the peninsula, Catawba Island and somehow found free overnight parking. We took a little stroll through the town, and Jillian friended a little stray dog. She named it chuck and wanted to take him back to the van and hang with him for the night, but Ricky said no way, Jose. Ok, Bedtime. Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!
next stop: Toledo + Detroit.
Ricky and Jillian