Enjoying the Day in Ohio

We had no real plans for the day, but to explore the town of Port Clinton and to search the beach for some beach glass.  I've read, that due to the shallow water of Lake Erie, this stretch of beach often gets a lot of tumbled glass, some antique glass from old ships and other shipments that have gone overboard, as well as broken glass such as beer bottles and old pop bottles, so I thought we’d see what we could find.

At breakfast, the kids discussed what our plans were for the day as they watched the boats and cars.

View of Lake Erie from our balcony.

View of the harbor from our balcony.

Right across the street from our condo was an area where we could go right down to the water, so Grandma Vicky, Derrick, the kids (Elliot stayed back with Ernie) and I grabbed some plastic baggies, the camera, and headed over to see what we could find.

Vicky had come over last night and told us there was a lot of shells.  She was right!

Everett enjoyed hopping from rock to rock.

Derrick was much better at finding the glass than I was. 

Everett, deep in the shells.

The amount of small shells, just in that narrow stretch of coastline, was amazing… it must have been at least 2 feet deep, if not more in some areas, and the kids had a fun time picking up shells, looking for glass and finding other beach treasures.

Spider web that Ethan found interesting.

After an hour or more, we found all that we were going to find for one trip, and everyone was getting hungry, so we gathered up our treasures and headed back across the street to the condo.

This is how we found Elliot when we returned.  Grandpa gave him something yummy to eat!

We decided to hit the park and eat, so we packed up and headed out to explore the town of Port Clinton.  As we were driving down the main drag, searching for a park and a place to eat a picnic lunch (we thought we’d checkout the Thai place down the street and grab some take out and the kids would eat sandwiches), we noticed carnival rides and what looked to be a decent sized “Walleye Festival”.  We thought that if things were still going on, we would check it out on our way back to the condo.

We had to wait for the draw bridge to go down as we crossed into town.

There were a few impressive, older homes in the area.  This one was for sale.

The weather was beautiful, so after lunch we played some kickball with the kids.

Derrick had A LOT of fun!

Elliot stuck to the playground; running around with the football and enjoying the slide was more his speed.

Across from the park was a public beach.  We thought that possibly we could find some beach glass there.  After the kids were done playing we walked across the street to check it out. 

In the distance, to the west, we could see the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station.

We ended up finding a few good pieces of blue, green and white beach glass (along with noticing a lot of broken beer bottles and pop bottles) and also a few other neat finds as well.  The kids were tired of looking and playing in the sand and they wanted to check out the carnival, so we met up with Derrick’s parents and Great Grandpa Dale and went to check out the Walleye Festival.

Great Grandpa Dale and Ethan, posing in front of the giant Walleye that the town lights up and drops on New Years Eve each year, similar to the ball drop in NYC.  Don't believe me?  Check it out here.

Elliot got excited when a large ferry boat come floating by.

Although the kids begged us a few times to ride the carnival rides we said no, (didn't they have enough rides yesterday?) and they were okay with that.  We walked around for a short time then headed home for dinner. 

Great Grandpa Dale went fishing from the pier behind the condo yesterday while we were all at the amusement park.  Ernie and Elliot watched, and Elliot told us all about the fish he caught.  When we got back to the condo they were cooking some fish for dinner.  We all ate together and then started packing for our journey in the morning to New Hampshire.

Don't ask me what he's doing, it takes a lot of thought to cook fish I guess.  :)

The boys enjoyed eating on the balcony.