Shannon left Monday afternoon, so we had time to do things in the morning. I had wanted to take Shannon to the Blue Door Restaurant here in Cuyahoga Falls; it is an amazing breakfast place, with gourmet breakfasts and European-style pastries. Sadly, as I had the wherewithal to look up before we left, they are closed on Monday and Tuesday. Plan B, then. I took Shannon to Yasoo, a breakfast restaurant that shares its space with a place called Hamburger Station (they change out menus at 11:00 or so). It is a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, with really good food. Shannon loved it.

We still had some time after breakfast, so we went home and grabbed Shannon’s stuff (so we could head to the airport if needed), and then I drove all of us over near Boston Store, in the Valley. I wanted to introduce Meredith and Shannon to the Stanford Trail, and then Shannon to Brandywine Falls.

I had hiked the Stanford Trail with my J-term class at CVCA back in January. The trail is very pretty, and fairly challenging, with several steep hill sections. It has a small stream as well, and has a remote feel to it, even though it is fairly easy to get to. Mer had never hiked it before, so it was new to her. The Stanford Trail has the advantage of joining up with the Brandywine Falls loop, which has the highlight of the boardwalks down to and overlooking the Falls themselves. Brandywine Falls is a pretty good-sized waterfall; it is the tallest in Northeast Ohio that I know of, and it is pretty to boot, spreading out over rock formations. Shannon seemed to like it pretty well. The Brandywine loop then follows the river down for awhile and crosses it, on a fairly new footbridge (you used to have to ford the stream). The loop took us back to the Stanford Trail, and we headed back to the car.

With one detour. When I had hiked the trail with my J-term class, I had seen a trail to a pond that I wanted to check out, but we did not have time. This time, I wanted to see it. Shannon made the smart alec remark that it was probably a little mud pond covered in algae. We hiked the quarter mile or so to the pond. Which was a little mud pond covered in algae. Needless to say, I got some grief about that.

Once back at the car, Shannon said he did not mind if we took him to the airport, even though it was a bit early (about forty-five minutes earlier than we would have otherwise gone). So, we headed toward Canton, but I deemed we had enough time to swing by Handel’s in North Canton, to which Shannon did not protest; he got one more Ohio experience under his belt, so to speak.

We dropped Shannon off at the airport, and he later e-mailed me to say he was at his gate about ninety minutes early; he got back to Chicago fine. We went home and resumed our more normal schedule by watching an episode of Lost while eating supper. I’m confident Shannon had a better time this time in Ohio than he did during his last (roofing) visit.