Kayaking at Findley State Park, Wellington, Ohio

This morning Jim and I kayaked at Findley State Park.  We've spent a lot of time at Findley on other visits and it's a beautiful park a few miles from my mom's house.  We took a canoe out several years ago, but this time we've got our own kayaks so we spent two hours slowly cruising the lake's perimeter.

The lake is 93 acres big.  Even though I grew up on a farm comprised of many acres, I have no mental picture of how much land that is.  Per the internet, there are 43,560 square feet in an acre.  An acre is also 91 percent of a football field if you don't count the end zones. So Findley Lake is just under the size of 93 football fields. That still doesn't help my mental image, but the lake did seem pretty big.

In other news:  Mom's wifi is on the fritz, so yesterday I called her Internet provider and they sent a new modem. Today Jim replaced the old modem with the new but it seems it's actually a problem on the provider's end.  Meanwhile, I swept part of Mom's unfinished basement.  I put a broom to it when I was here in February and there's maybe a new spider web or two but other than that Mom's basement -- like the rest of her house -- is spotless.

We've been in Ohio one week today, and it's rained every single day.  Last night the rain came down in sheets. This afternoon a storm came in from the south that pounded so hard the ground looked white.  Killdeer must love the rain because a couple dozen of them showed up in the field next to Mom's house when the rain first hit. Or maybe -- because they build nests on the ground -- they were running for cover.

Our kayaks waiting for us at the Findley State Park boat dock.   This is a good dock because it's low in the water which makes it (in theory) easy to keep your center of gravity (i.e., your butt) low while getting into the boat. And a low butt is a dry butt.  Again, in theory.

I'm not sure what kind of dragon fly this is, but one section of Findley Lake had a lot of the double-winged insects -- including one that settled in on Jim's kayak for an easy across the lake ride.  There were also a lof of water bugs skittering on the lake.

I did not use any kind of a telephoto lens to take this pic.  Instead I took the photo while my kayak floated right under this Blue Heron.

I'm not sure what kind of tree has this white spiky fruit, but it was growing practically in the water.

Jim on the Findley State Park bayou -- if they have such a thing in Ohio.

Kayaking and the Fam

This weekend we did some kayaking and spent time with family.

Kayaking:  Right now it takes us longer to put the kayaks on our car than it does to hook up our tow car to our motor home.  

Jim researched kayak carriers and bought a Thule system.  It brought the kayaks safely from Utah to Ohio, so it works great.  Jim has also used it by himself to get his 44-pound Delta kayak to Little Dell reservoir in Utah.  

But now we're using it together.  Any married couple can see the folly in that.  I apparently don't have the "furniture moving gene" which helps create the best case scenario for loading and unloading kayaks and which Jim thinks exists only in people with a Y chromosome.

But we're getting the hang of working together to move a 44-pound boat and a 50-pound boat up on top of the car, securing them so they're tightly held by the carrier and then taking them off in reverse.  Like the motorhome/tow car attachment (and most other things) disassembly goes more quickly than assembly.

As for actually being on the water,  we paddled the the 21-acre lake at the Wellington Reservation, a county park two miles from Mom's house.

Family:  We spent time with my brother Bob and sister-in-law Suzie who live in Brecksville.  Bob is a veterinarian and Suzie retired from her teaching career at Cuyahoga Community College.

The kayaks as they ride on top of our Honda CRV.  When we go long distances we also secure them with a strap that circles both boats. Jim says it's the angle of this photo is what makes the kayak on the right look less than upright.

My kayak on the Thule kayak carrier.

I took my digital camera (stored in a zip-lock bag when I wasn't using it) with me this time.  

Jim kayaking at the Wellington Reservation.  The lake was longer than it looked during the many walks we've taken on the Reservation's four miles of trails.

Jim is ahead and to the right.  In the background is the very cute Wellington Reservation Visitors' Center/park office.  The Reservation has four paddle boats people can use for free.  

 From left to right are Suzie, Jim, Mom and Bob eating blue cheese our brother Don and SIL Trudy of Nebraska sent us from Maytag Dairy Farms of Newton, Iowa.  The dairy is owned by the same family that once owned the Maytag Appliance Company.  While the appliance business was sold, a fourth generation of Maytags still owns the cheese company and makes the cheese almost entirely by hand. 

We followed the cheese with, as Trudy said, "a Blizzard chaser" at Dairy Queen.

Jim multitasking (drinking coffee and looking at his iPhone) by our rig, which is parked at my Mom's house.

In Cleveland

We took Bev's son, Paul, back to his home in Lakewood, Ohio, today.  We also met up with Salt Lake friends John and Debbie who grew up in Ohio and are here visiting family.

Downtown Cleveland as seen from Edgewater Park. 

In front of our lunch spot, the Buckeye Beer Engine, in Lakewood.  From left to right:  Deb's sister Lisa and brother-in-law Jim; John; my Jim; Deb's brother-in-law David and Deb's sister Pam; Deb; John and Deb's son Chris who is visiting from Washington DC; Paul.

Same gang, this time with fewer rabbit ears, Paul as the photographer and Bev at the far right.  

To Mom's via the turnpike

We drove to my Mom's in Ohio via the Indiana and Ohio turnpikes.  It cost us $21.95 for 166 miles.  The turnpike was not the best road we've ever driven on and it was not the worst. You'd think for more than a few bucks we'd get if not a super highway at least a really good highway.  But it was an experience and we now know what traffic lane to get into for our ticket.

So we’re at my Mom’s in Wellington, Ohio, a town in northeastern Ohio of about 5,000 people where I grew up.

This morning Jim, Cooper and I walked at the Wellington Reservation, part of the Lorain County Metro Parks System. 

Paul (Bev’s son), Bev’s mom and Bev. Jim and I picked Paul up in Cleveland, where he lives, and he’ll spend a few days with us.

Mom's house with our motor home and tow car parked to the left.

Chain O'Lakes State Park in eastern Indiana

Long drive yesterday.  The plan was to do 325 miles from Muscatine to Chain O'Lakes State Park in western Indiana, north of Ft. Wayne.  The park's highlight is 9 lakes connected by channels; when we visited two years ago we thought it would be a great place to kayak.  We now have kayaks, so we came back.

Last time we drove east we were newbies and the idea of driving 40 feet of vehicle on I-80 near Chicago was intimidating.  This time, after checking the Illinois DOT site for road closures and construction, we decided I-80 was the way to go.  It probably would have been worse on a weekday, but I-80 seemed easy with just a little bit of congestion on a 35-mile stretch straddling the Illinois/Indiana border. 

Then we got off I-80 into more pastoral areas of Indiana and ran into a road closure on Indiana State Route 6 going east.  Obviously I should have also checked the Indiana DOT website.  The detour added 75 miles to an already long day, plus our iPhones routed us on ten miles of country roads where I prayed we would not meet one of those huge tractors with drills/planters/discs that take up 75 percent of the road, because we take up a pretty good hunk of it ourselves and can't back up.  

But we're at Chain O'Lakes and this morning went kayaking. I've kayaked in a tandem boat before but had never paddled in one by myself. This was also the first time I used my new Wilderness Systems kayak Jim and I bought after my knee surgery.  We paddled four of the nine lakes plus a long, narrow channel of water lilies.  Jim says he thinks animals don't recognize people in kayaks as human and are not as afraid -- and that certainly seemed true.  Vultures landed in branches right over our heads.  A squirrel jumped from a nearby branch and almost dumped himself in the water.  A water snake swam about six feet away from me near the shore.  Lovely and fun.

I didn't take my camera because I thought I'd dump it in the water, so Jim took this pic of me in the channel between Dock Lake and Long Lake at Chain O'Lakes.

Bev across the lake from Jim.  In the dead tree behind me is a big vulture who was later joined by a few friends. 

The view from Jim's kayak.