Ohio Trip | October 2019

We spent 11 days traveling in October to Vancouver and Ohio.  We planned a trip back to Ohio at the end of October to see our new nephew Pierce around 3 months old, and before Todd’s sister Amy went back to work from maternity leave.  We happened to be in Ohio in August when Pierce was born, so this time we can see him much bigger and more interactive! 

We left on Saturday 10/26.  Our flight was delayed by two hours in Nashville, so we didn’t get into Cleveland until 10:30 PM.  We watched Ohio State beat Wisconsin on YouTube TV on the iPad at the airport.

On Sunday 10/27 we just hung out, because it was rainy there.  We got to have lunch at CoreLife Eatery.  I helped Amy & Luke with some financial planning as far as budgeting, retirement, college funds, etc.  It was very productive for being a rainy day!

On Monday 10/28 we had a very full day.  In the morning we drove to the Goodyear Blimp hangar at Wingfoot Lake, Ohio.  My father-in-law Tim is contracting at Goodyear and arranged a special tour of the hangar and the Wingfoot One Blimp for us!  It was a guided tour with one of the pilots of the blimp. 

We got to learn the history of the Goodyear Blimps, including involvement in WWII and blimps as part of the submarine fleet in the Navy.  It was quite interesting. 

This is one of the blimps that you see at sporting events!

The aerial camera is mounted in the front of the gondola, below the nose.

There’s a whole rack of AV equipment for broadcasting the images to the networks for the events.

A view of the blimp cockpit.

After the tour, we drove to the Goodyear headquarters in Akron, where we got signed in as Tim’s visitors.  They are very secretive at Goodyear HQ.  We got signed in and they put stickers on our phones to cover both the front and back cameras so we couldn’t take photos while there.  Tim treated us to the really awesome cafeteria there for lunch, and we got to visit the offices where he works. 

In the afternoon we started cooking for our Very Ghoulish Halloween Dinner!  Before the trip, Todd’s sister Amy planned for us to cook an entire dinner made of ghoulish things to celebrate Halloween.  It was all hands on deck as we prepared the extravaganza! 

I made these Crescent Mummy Dogs!

Amy made these spider cookies.

Todd got up early before the blimp tour so he could make this brain strawberry cheesecake!

My mother-in-law Sylvia made this spaghetti head with “eyeballs”.  The noodles are made of black beans and actually very good!  The texture was just right.  Not too soggy, just chewy enough.

So the idea was to make an entire human body of food items.  My brother-in-law Luke made the yummy ribs by sous vide and then grilling.  Get it, ribs?  He also grilled up some sausages to look like intestines.

We had some chicken legs (as legs), and some mashed potatoes and green beans.

Some more views of this ghoulish dinner.

It turned out so fun and also Pinterest-worthy!  Amy got to check this off her Halloween bucket list, ha ha.  The family that eats together, stays together!

We were supposed to fly back on Tuesday 10/29, but Southwest had flight cancellations and delays out of Denver, and our plane couldn’t make it to Cleveland for our flight out.  The delay would cause us to miss our connecting flight in Phoenix, so we booked flights for Wednesday at 8am to Atlanta, then San Diego.  But it happens that Tuesday was Luke’s birthday, so we got to celebrate with him with dinner out at Kingfish! 

Some other things… Noodle’s cousin Morton is a 24 lb Maine Coon!  I could barely hold him, he’s so big, LOL.

And the fall foliage is just so pretty.  Something we don’t see in SoCal.

And… looks like Sylvia & Todd have their hands full with the kids, ha ha.