Weekend Getaway - Photo Overload! :)

The last weekend of June Doug and I had an opportunity that doesn't happen too often.  We spent a night away from the house and kids!  We had talked about it for a while.  Ever since my mom offered to take all 3 kids for a weekend.  June 26-27 seemed like a good time to do it.  Summer time.  No school.  The kids don't have anywhere to be.  And most importantly, Doug was off work!


My mom decided to come up here and stay instead of taking the kids to her place.  That way they could sleep in their own beds (Keira had just moved into her new bedroom) and everyone could enjoy the air conditioning since it was so stinkin' hot.


So Doug and I packed a few things, threw our bikes into the back of the van, and headed north.  Not really sure where we were going.  We were thinking Erie though.  There's a really nice bike trail on Presque Isle that we wanted to check out.  I took my laptop so I could find bike trails and/or somewhere to stay on the ride up.  (We weren't really prepared since I didn't know for sure we were going ... Doug just finished up midnight shift and I was waiting to see if he was up to going.)  But I couldn't keep a signal for long.  So we stopped off in Meadville and parked in Staples' parking lot, where I got a good signal.  We found a trail called Cambridge Springs in Edinboro.  The Edinboro Inn was supposed to be 1/2 mile from it.  Edinboro was only about 20 miles north of Meadville so we headed out.


We found Edinboro with no problem.  Just down the road we saw the sign for the Edinboro Inn.  Doug pulled into the parking lot, we drove up to the hotel and saw a POSTED sign in the window.  Hmmm, guess we weren't going to stay there for the night.  We wondered why the sign at the road didn't say they were closed.


So we drove around a bit looking for the bike trail.  No luck.  We found a pretty lake, but no trail.  Edinboro is one of those places that if you blink while driving through, you miss it.  :)  Sure, there's a big university there, but not much else.  We decided to check out the Comfort Suites Inn that we passed as soon as we got off the interstate to see if they had any rooms available.  The guy at the front desk said we were in luck, they had "one room left."  For the low rate of $159 we could sleep there.  Yikes!  But with our AAA discount, we only paid $143.  :)  And they did offer a "free" hot breakfast in the morning.  I thought we should go somewhere else, but we chose to stay.  We were tired and getting hungry, so up we went.


We surfed the net again and found where the trail was supposed to be and set out in search of it.  Still no luck.  We had passed a sign for the Wooden Nickel restaurant while we were out so we thought we'd go check it out.  We drove back the long dirt road to it to find out that they closed at 6:00.  It was 5:45.  Ugh!  What restaurant closes at 6:00?!  Isn't that when most people eat?  The only other restaurants in Edinboro were Pizza Hut, Burger King, or bars.  Not good.


So back on the interstate ... we drove back down to Meadville and ate at Cracker Barrel.  Doug has worked in Meadville several times over that past few months and never even knew there was a Cracker Barrel there.  :)  While waiting for our dinner, Doug was trying to beat this little peg game they have on the tables.

He said his grandmother taught him how to win by leaving only 1 peg, so he was trying to remember how.  I thought how nice a memory that is since his grandmother has been gone for a few years now.  He didn't win while we were there.  I think he did get down to 2 pegs once though.  After our yummy dinner, we checked out the store that you have to walk through to get in/out of the restaurant.  We found a checkers game that we bought for the kids.

It is made out of entirely recycled materials, which is cool.  The "board" was made in Georgia and the chips are made in Canada.  We've had a few good checkers matches so far.  My mother-in-law was kicking Keira's behind just last night.  :)


Outside they were having a sidewalk sale.  Everything was 60% off, I think.  Except for the awesome rocking chairs.  They were $129 and if we had had room in the car, we would have brought one home.  Another day.  :)

Doug took this picture of me sitting in the rocker I wanted.

This isn't the greatest picture (too much sun!), but we don't get too many pictures of us together, so here it is anyway.  It is better than nothing!  And, yes, we are wearing similar color shirts.  I didn't even realize that until we got back to the hotel room.  :)

After dinner we headed out to Conneaut Lake Park.  We knew it had changed hands a few times and wanted to see what it was like now.  There are no pictures of the amusement park because it was sad.  Run down, trees and bushes growing up in some of the rides.  Not good.  We walked down the boardwalk along the lake and I snapped a few pics just to show that we were there.

We decided to head back to the hotel room.   We checked out the fitness center room, which was just a treadmill, an elliptical, a weight machine and a stretching machine.  Oh, and a TV.  Thankfully there was no one in there because if there was, it would have been really crowded.  :)  I did a mile on the treadmill while Doug played around on the other equipment.  After that we headed up to our room for the evening.  ;)


We were up bright and early on Sunday morning, showered, and got packed up.  Doug checked out the possible bike trails in Erie on my laptop.  We had breakfast at the hotel.  We had paid for it already.  Then we jumped in the car and headed to Erie.


We found a place to park the van and rode our bikes for about 8 miles.  It was nice, but hot.  We got back to the car and decided to go further out on the Isle to see what was there.  We found another place to park and got the bikes back out.  I took my camera this time.

A sailboat in the bay where we left the car.

Doug at Misery Bay

Me at Misery Bay - Doug needs some practice with my camera.  This is one of the few pics where I am actually in focus.  :)

More pics at Misery Bay

Then we headed to the beach.

I have no idea what beach we were on.  We just stopped somewhere along the way where there weren't too many cars.


We had such a nice time, Doug is already talking about going away again in September when he is on vacation.  Next time to Niagara Falls (the US side).  He's going to try to talk his mom and dad into taking the kids that time.  Here's hopin'!

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