Presque Isle State Park
We left Toronto at 9:30 AM and headed towards Erie Pennsylvania. Due to the long weekend, it took us longer than expected to get to Presque Isle State Park, and we arrived around 2:30. The drive was long, but Adam was, for the most part, very well-behaved. He slept for most of it, and played with his car seat toy. We learned on this trip that we have to plan road trips around the baby’s eating schedule – bottle-feeding in the car works, until the burping. When he doesn’t burp, all hell breaks loose.
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We drove into Presque Isle State Park and stopped for the bathroom at the Ranger Station. They gave us a map and told us what to do and where to go. Our first item on the agenda was lunch. We went to the beach on the Lake Erie side of the peninsula (left turn just past the ponds and pavilions) and had a BBQ picnic at the rotary pavilion. There is a parking lot right next to this beach, so rolling the cooler and stroller to the picnic tables was easy. There were 4-5 picnic tables in the sand, but one of the tables has a boardwalk leading right up to it. This beach, along with many others in the park have lifeguards and was a really pleasant spot.
We then went on a walk with the stroller on the multi-purpose trail. We passed by some really beautiful spots on both the Lake Erie side of the peninsula and the Presque Isle Bay side. People had their kayaks and canoes and were boating in the Bay. There was the option to rent bikes and tandem bikes, there was a playground, and many other activities.
We only walked around for about an hour and a half, and spent some of that time on a secluded part of the beach. It was really a beautiful day.
We left the park at around 5:00 and drove to Cleveland for supper at Issi’s Place, a kosher pizza/sushi shop in the Beachwood neighbourhood. After supper we drove to the Brown’s stadium (FirstEnergy Stadium) to introduce Adam to his favorite football team.
We then went to Edgewater park for sunset. This park was also really nice, with the skyline of downtown Cleveland on one side and Lake Erie on the other. It was a nice place to walk and see the sunset, but the mosquitos were overwhelming so we decided to leave after only a short while. Seems like this park is the happening place as it was the only heavily populated area of Cleveland we had seen that evening. Which also meant leaving took a little bit of time.
We then drove about 40 minutes to our hotel in Streetsboro, OH, close to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Adam was quite unhappy during this drive, so one of us had to sit in the backseat with him and console him throughout the drive.
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