Five for the Road

As per their usual custom, Uncle K took the nephews with him to Starbucks before church this morning. Hot chocolate for J and a double chocolate chip frappuccino for M (just how many calories are in that thing?!) We caught up with them at church – so nice to see so many familiar faces this morning!

After church, we grabbed a quick lunch and loaded up the car. K is coming with us as far as Cleveland, where he’ll stop in to visit some of his customers before flying back to Chicago. Until then – it will be a cozy ride in the back seat of our full-size car.



Jr. Ranger badge #64

We decided to take a little detour to stop by the visitor center for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Before we left, I printed out the booklets for the Great Lakes Junior Ranger program – the boys worked on the activities on the plane and turned it in here for a special badge and patch.

The ranger also offered them a separate booklet to earn another patch, different from the one they already have from our last visit here. They were tempted, but we needed to get back on the road towards Ohio. Looks like we’ll be stopping by again on our next trip back…

It rained on and off the rest of the way to Sandusky.  (Such a bad association with that name now – what a sad, awful story!) Between traffic through downtown Chicago, our detour to Indiana Dunes, a stop to fill-up the tank, and losing an hour due to the time change, it was almost 8:00PM Eastern by the time we pulled into town. So we stopped for dinner at Steak ‘n Shake (again!) along with a bunch of people who must have been chased out of Cedar Point by the rain. Steakburgers for all of the boys and chili mac for me!

By the time we arrived at Hotel Breakers on the Point, it wasn’t worth it to try and go into the park. So we just checked in and unloaded our stuff into our 3 double-bed suite. The room is in the main section (oldest part, no elevators!) of the hotel – the room décor is a little dated, but it’s clean. We’re only here to sleep anyway. The nice thing about this set-up is that our family has one room with 2 beds, K gets a room to himself, plus there’s a large sitting room looking out over the beach and Lake Erie.

Look out, Cedar Point! Here we come!