Happy anniversary, Meredith! Twelve years of being married to my best friend. I love you!

Friday, July 30th and Saturday, July 31st

Ellen did feel better on Friday morning. We all took it easy and and did not rush too much. Once everyone was awake and ready to go, we headed down to Akron to go to Wally Waffle for breakfast. We all got some form of waffle (I got chocolate chip), and Ellen gave the waffle batter a thumbs-up.

We then headed over to the Valley to go to the Nature Realm Metro Park. The Nature Realm does not have the rock outcroppings that the Gorge trail does, but it is still pretty and interesting. It has a wildflower meadow, a lake, a steep creek bed that has a suspension bridge over it, several impressive vistas, and an ivy garden. We tromped all over the park, doing all of the trails and having a good time. We were in no rush, so we took advantage of benches that overlooked the creek, and we spent some time admiring the climbing ivy garden that was growing over wire gazebo-like structures that made Ellen want to learn to weld so she can build one. I expect to see an arc welder in her garage next time we visit her house. There were lots of bees and butterflies around to watch, and it was a not-too-hot day, so we had a good time.

To add to the good time, we stopped by Handel’s ice cream on the way home. Sadly, Ellen is still not in the Riordan dessert-class yet, and so was unable to finish her sundae. If she keeps hanging out with us, there is every reason to believe she can work her way up to our standards. After ice cream, we went home to rest, which included about an hour-long nap for me.

For supper, we headed over to the Northeast Ohio restaurant chain Aladdin’s. Aladdin’s restaurant serves Middle Eastern fare, and Ellen was delighted. She pretty much liked everything that was on the menu. I was the only one to take advantage of Aladdin’s excellent cake selection – I guess Mer and Ellen were still digesting ice cream.

After supper, we went back to Akron to go to Aeros Stadium, home of the Akron Aeros Minor League baseball team. None of the three of us is a huge baseball fan, but Mer and I love going to an Aeros game once or twice a year. The park is beautiful, and there are lots of wacky things that go on between innings. On this day, between innings, the crew threw t-shirts into the crowd, had three kids have an air guitar competition, had two guys spin around a bat until they were dizzy and then had them run a race, and had a three-way race between people dressed up as cream sticks. The chocolate cream stick won, and that meant our section over third base all won coupons to a local grocery store for cream sticks. Yum. It is just a fun and relaxing way to spend an evening, and it was a glorious evening.

As far as the baseball went, the Aeros won, which is always a nice thing when we go to see a game. I bought Ellen a giant Aeros foam claw for the humor value of seeing her wear it, which she did for most of the game. And then, after the game, there was a fireworks show over left field. These Aeros fireworks shows are very impressive. They only last about fifteen minutes, but they are great – lots of fireworks going off all at once, and you are only a few hundred yards from where they are launching the fireworks. They are by far the best fireworks shows I have ever seen. Ellen seemed to have a good time, as indicated by enthusiastic foam-clad hand-waving when good things happened on the field. It was a really great way to end the last full day of Lavisher Ohio.

Saturday was a short day – Ellen was planning on leaving in the early afternoon, and Mer and I had a plane to catch in Cleveland for a week-long trip to Vancouver that we were taking to celebrate our anniversary. We still wanted to have a Lavisher Ohio kind of day, though. Ellen had been mentioning she was tight in the neck and shoulders from her drive and from some painting she had been doing in her house. I had remembered a local massage place had advertised a $35 hour-long massage, so I called them up and got an appointment for Ellen for 10:00. Ellen was pretty excited by a $35 massage.

We dropped Ellen off at the salon, and then Mer and I went and wandered the pedestrian street in downtown Cuyahoga Falls. It was an early Saturday, so not much was going on, but we just wanted the walk anyway. We got to the end of the street, and sat down on the open-air stage to enjoy the sunshine. While we were there, four people came into the seating area for the stage. It was two photographers and a young couple who were having engagement pictures taken. It turned out that the young couple were both former CVCA students. Small world in Northeast Ohio. We got to see the pictures being taken and then got to see the young woman’s ring. They continued on their way, and we headed back to the car and picked up a more-relaxed Ellen.

To conclude Lavisher Ohio, we headed over to the Sheraton hotel in Cuyahoga Falls, and went to the restaurant there. They have a brunch every Saturday and Sunday, and the views of the river and some of the falls are quite pretty. We ate a very leisurely brunch, and then wandered out on to the viewing/walking decks over the river and watched the water for a few minutes. Then we headed home and Ellen got packed up and Mer and I started packing ourselves. We all had packed quite a bit into a little over three days.