I’m late for SoCS, but Linda gives us a prompt every Saturday and yesterday I was in the car most of the day so…

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “run.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

Did we run to the top of the United States last week? Our feet, legs, and back feel like we did this morning!

The 2, 700+ miles we put on the rental car attest to the fact. Our journey took us all the way to Ravenna and Cleveland, where I got to dip my toes in the Great Lake Erie, meet some really awesome folks from David’s Marine days, and step inside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but just the gift shop. A new reason to go back someday.

Lake Erie, Cleveland, Cathy and Earl in the basement man cave and some shots of their beautiful back yard flowers. They have a Rose of Sharon and a pink magnolia that I wish had opened up so I could see the blooms instead of just buds.

Cathy and Earl were fabulous hosts, warmed right up to the both of us and we left with their numbers and a ton of great memories and pictures. Cleveland gets a bad rap in my opinion, then again, we experienced it in the broad daylight. Nighttime might be a different story. Anyway, we played around on the famous signs for some pics akin to “Friends” days, walked around Lake Erie taking pics and gathering a few stones for me to tumble from their “beach” and learned a new and fun game of Golf with a deck of cards. We ate good tasting but unhealthy food-pizza, burgers, and bbq, drank and played parlor games in the man cave all night one night, and talked each others ears off!

Next leg was Van Wert and Convoy three hours southwest of Earl’s house to go meet the granddaughter. I took this on the way out of Ravenna.

When we got to Van Wert, I was astonished how much of the county is nothing but corn and soybean fields. Dave said we must have been the America’s heartland. We checked into our hotel and drove on to Convoy to meet Taylor, Rayven, and Ray. Rayven was excited and ran around the house like she was shot in the booty with an arrow! It’s a good sized home with a second floor, so she also showed off her skill at sliding down the carpeted stairs on her belly. She’s a hoot! They had three large dogs they had to keep in pens, because Taylor said they get too excited and might make us sorry we came. They did bark a lot! Ray seemed nice in the short time we met with him, but he always had to run off to work. In Convoy and Van Wert, they delay school on foggy mornings. That was a shock until we learned that the fog off the farmed fields is so bad the school buses could crash, so they wait until all is clear to get kids to school.

Just a few pics showing us taking Rayven to Smiley Park, meeting her mom and seeing her pretty chickens, and one from Rayven swimming at our hotel.

I loved all the old houses in the town of Van Wert, so I captured a few for your viewing pleasure.

Beautiful homes, every type of pine tree (Christmas trees) we called lots of them, and the town’s courthouse.

We enjoyed the week and now we are glad to be home to get our ducks in order before the next run which will start with North Carolina. But first, Dave must have his surgery, (who knows when), we have to get the bus back from the shop, and I need to report the month’s blood pressure record to my nephrologist to see if any changes have to be made. I also need to maybe visit the dentist, because two of my back teeth are hurting when hot temperatures hit them. (Ugh) Today will be family dinner, and Bubba’s son Stephen will be visiting to check on Dave and have a meal before heading back to Washington. What a full week! Gotta run, take care everyone!

PS-Still to come: all the pics Dave took while we were there!