Ohio - Show me what ya' got (Part 3)

On Thursday we continued our trip with a drive up to Cleveland. As we made our way through downtown en route to the Great Lakes Science Center, we took in the sights of massive, decorated electric guitars lining the streets (Cleveland is home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after all). After a couple wrong turns, we got back on track and parked in the underground parking garage for the next-door Cleveland Browns stadium.

Unfortunately, the Great Lakes Science Center was a disappointment. Part of it, I'm sure, is that Ava is not the right age for something like that. The other part is, neither are Doni and I! Granted, if Ava were older and was able to interact with the exhibits we could have all had fun through her. Instead we went from exhibit to exhibit looking for something that adults could do without having to defend ourselves against the many pushy, sugar-fueled kids. We didn't have much more planned for Cleveland so we went to lunch and made our way to the hotel for a swim in the pool.

The next morning we left for what turned out to be, in my opinion, the best day of our trip. We started making our way west of Cleveland to the African Safari Wildlife Park, essentially a drive-through zoo. Since this was all we had planned for the day, we stopped at a Holiday Inn in Sandusky to sample the brochures in their lobby for ideas of other things to do. This ended up being a very good idea. More on this later...

The drive-through zoo was quite the experience. First, the cup of food that we were given at the entrance was quickly wrenched from my hands and a good portion of its contents fell on the floormats of our CR-V. I was comforted by the fact that this was fairly commonplace as we were surrounded by a food-cup graveyard. Despite being without bait, we were able to entice animals to the car just by rolling down the windows. Like Pavlov-ian dogs, they would stick their faces into the car searching for food. This is fun and enjoyable when the face is a deer or antelope, but when a buffalo sticks his massive head 3/4 of the way into your vehicle you get a little more antsy.

Halfway through we bought some carrots to feed the animals as they all looked so disappointed when they left our car with nothing but their drool in their mouths. The park definitely saved the best animals for last. After feeding the zebras we opened up the sunroof for the giraffes. I can testify first-hand that giraffes have massively LONG tongues. Doni nearly got a wet-willy that she would not soon forget.


Thanks to our brochure pit-stop, we decided to take a ferry to Put in bay on South Bass Island. After a 20 minutes ferry ride, we started what we thought was a less than a 0.5 mile walk to Perry's cave. About 2.5 miles later we arrived to the thanks of both my feet and my flip-flops. We did a little spelunking and later walked through a nearby butterfly house that surprisingly had more interesting butterflies than the Indianapolis Zoo & White River Gardens.


We later took a short walk through downtown Put in bay, a bus ride back to the ferry dock (the best $6 we've ever spent), and a ferry ride back to our CR-V. We drove to our hotel while Ava took a much needed nap. That day was a great end to a great vacation. I count myself lucky for being able to spend it with my two favorite ladies.