6/21/21: The Back Roads from Chicago to Cleveland

Steven and I had spent the last three days in the Chicago suburb of Wicker Park visiting our daughter, Natalie, and her family so we could get to know our almost one-year-old granddaughter, Clara, a little bit more. Now we have two, year-old granddaughters in our lives, one also in San Francisco, we're feeling the physical separation so much more. Just another excuse to go to both cities as often as possible so we're more than just photos in the girls' lives!

Gas prices were the highest so far of our road trip in the Windy City, with the average at $3.49 a gallon though some topped out at $3.89 a gallon, ouch! Considering we estimated driving about 10,000 miles on this 2.5 month-long trip, we were hoping for cheaper gas!

Steven had found several roadside attractions for us to stop at on the drive from Chicago to Cleveland, Ohio, his old stomping ground that he had lived in as a teenager and then after university for a few years. At the Indiana Welcome Center in Hammond was the Flick Statue from the 1993 A Christmas Story that was set in northern Indiana. One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is when the character Flick gets his tongue stuck to a frozen flagpole on a triple-dog-dare. Here was a bronze statue commemorating the movie scene. Look for more about the movie in an upcoming Cleveland post, BTW! 

If you ever fancied a $20,000 glass duck, look no further than this one also at the Welcome Center!

Steven and I smailed when we saw this Indiana car with license plates that had the original spelling of his family's last name before they emigrated from Lithuania.

Rather than take the bust interstate freeway from Chicago to Cleveland, we opted instead for the more peaceful and interesting drive across Indiana on Highway 6, also known as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway. 

The small town of Bremen was the heart of the state's Amish community. As we were soon going to be returning to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the country's center for the Amish, we didn't dawdle in Bremen. We did wonder, though, whether some of the Amish furniture we had recently custom ordered would be coming from Bremen as we spotted so many Amish Furniture shops!

There had been a tornado warning on our phones the night before in Chicago but we hadn't realized the storm's wrath had also headed further east.

The town of Bowling Green over the state line in Ohio had a huge and very impressive police headquarters ...

and a commanding County Courthouse. The town, famous for its eponymous university, was billed as "one of America's best college towns." As we spent a while driving around the town, we could see that it rightly earned that description - so many of the homes were quite stunning and interesting shops and restaurants were plentiful.

One of the reasons we had stopped in Bowling Green was to see what turned out to be this underwhelming mural made by art students from the university that depicted the city's residents in their various professions and at play.

The mural on the barn near Gibsonburg reminded everyone not to forget the tragic events of 9/11 that took place twenty years ago next month.

From the oh-so charming town of Vermilion, we had our first view of Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes on or near the US and Canada border. Erie was the shallowest and the smallest by volume of the lakes.

When Vermilion became a town in 1837, the inhabitants built their own navigational aid at the mouth of the river by using wooden stakes topped with oil-burning beacons. When a new wooden lighthouse was constructed ten years later, the lighthouse keeper who lived in the village lit the lamp each evening and went out every morning to extinguish it.

After another thirty years had passed, an iron lighthouse was built in 1877 from canons melted down after the 1861 Civil War Battle of Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The postcard from 1906 showed oil being stored in the small building next to the lighthouse. The early lighthouses were lit with whale oil but that cost rose dramatically due to the decrease of sperm whales in the mid-19th century. Lard oil and then kerosene became the common energy sources. 

According to a 1920 newspaper, town residents believed there was "no more romantic spot on earth than the Vermilion lighthouse, not even Niagara Falls excepted." After the lighthouse was found to be leaning in 1929, the US Army Corps of Engineers was taken down and replaced with a skeletal tower. This 34-foot tall replacement was erected in 1991.

Leaving Vermilion after 6, we checked Google maps for restaurant suggestions nearby. The app certainly had us pegged when it suggested the 83% match of Danny Boy's Pasta in the town of Rocky River on the west side of Cleveland based on our previous restaurant stops. I couldn't have eaten a more delicious sandwich anywhere and Steven also enjoyed his. 

This was the first amusing bathroom sign worth taking a photo of in about a year of traveling!

Next post: Cleveland's Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.

Posted on August 9th, 2021, from Grayton Beach State Park on Florida's Panhandle, our 'happy place.'