Thursday, July 02, 2009

The Great Upper Midwest Adventure - Day 1

Our vacation this year is taking us through Ohio, Michigan, Canada, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and then back home. We will be driving a lot and looking for funny roadside picture opportunities along the way. I hope you enjoy the ride with us.

On June 27th we left the house at about 8am. Not in any big hurry to get anywhere and it was a bit foggy out. Jake was barking the last we heard, so yes we are in trouble with the dog.

The drive to Ohio was uneventful. Somewhere along the way we decided to stop for lunch. So we pulled off the road to see what they have for lunch in Dover, Ohio. While driving around we found an Aldi store.
Some of you may be familiar with Aldi, but I wasn’t and had only heard that they are a German owned store and might have some German type products in them – and you know how FabHub and I are all about finding German stuff when we can. So we stopped and went inside to check it out. They did have some products that I don’t see at my normal stores. Some of it seemed to have a European flair, then again, we were in Ohio, so maybe they just have stuff like that.

After that stop we took off to find our lunch, and what we found has ruined my BBQ lunches forever. The place we stopped at is called Hog Heaven.
It is a BBQ joint using the Hog as dinner and decoration, there were Harley Davidson displays all around. There were even a few parked outside. Hog Heaven seems to be the place to go for the Harley enthusiasts. I had the brisket and I must say it was better than any I have ever had. The meat was slow grilled, sliced so thin I thought they had put bacon on my sandwich, and I think it was marinated in some sauce that really enhanced the grilling flavor making it just Delicious. FabHub had the pulled pork and shared the same reaction. The fries were awesome too. Sorry work town BBQ place, but I am going to have to save that brisket memory forever. Good thing you serve chicken too!

We drove on after lunch and went through Canton, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. See, we got a picture of the bridge.
Then after a bit more driving we found ourselves at the first overnight stop on our trip, Sandusky where most people go to enjoy Cedar Point, we just went to see the water. We got to town a bit before check-in time so we drove down to the shore to see Lake Erie. FabHub was willing to get his photo taken as long as I only got his good side.
We did actually get a look at Cedar Point, see the roller coasters?
We also saw someone getting their wedding photos taken. It was a beautiful setting for that.
Driving back to the hotel we found a fun painting on the front of a building.
After we got the hotel sorted out we went out to Marblehead to get a look at the lighthouse on Lake Erie and see if we could find some other interesting sights. The Lighthouse faces northeast over the western basin of Lake Erie.
We found the lighthouse along with some nice rocky beach scenes.
There were a couple of sailboats out on the horizon
No people in sight on them
There were also a bunch of guys fishing for nothing as far as we could see.
After looking at that stuff for a while we took off looking for dinner and ran across Dino along the way. He seemed very tame and happy with no interest of breaking out of his enclosure. He was also well trained to manage standing on those cement blocks without wobbling.

Dinner that night was lake caught Walleye and Perch. It was really very good. The live entertainment on the other hand, not so much.
Heading to Canada tomorrow. Later!

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