A Wee Bit O Fun In Cleveland

Last weekend we traveled to Cleveland,Ohio, for their 29th Annual Irish Cultural Festival.  There were four or five times over the past ten years that we’ve enjoyed these Celtic festivities with our very good friends Mike and Suzanne Flynn.  Each one has good memories connected and 2011 adds to that bank. We had a great time listening to music, taking in the cultural exhibits, shopping the Irish booths, sampling the brews, watching people and sharing life and laughs.

Of course, the recent Midwest temps of around 100 degrees and 90% humidity did make it less appealing to sit in a fairgrounds building or at a bandstand for daytime events. But,….we improvised.  The air conditioning in the motorhome was working just fine, so we made our own festival schedule.  Since we were parked on the fairgrounds where the Irish Fest took place, we could come and go as we chose.  We worked in time for a good mix of everything, including our Celtic airbrush tattoos.

The evenings weren’t quite as sweltering and there was still a wide selection of entertainers. For instance, three of our favorites this year were a group called Girsa, seven young women with beautiful voices who interchangeably played the guitar, bohran, keyboards, accordion and fiddle; The New Barleycorn, a local trio of men who pleased the crowds with their renditions of the traditional Irish fare and the High Kings, four guys all based in Ireland who brought the house down with their talent and enthusiasm. And no Irish Fest would be complete without the sounds of the bagpipes and the energetic young dancers….just the icing on the cake. We had a good weekend of entertaining ourselves and being entertained, while staying reasonably comfortable.

But speaking of being comfortable, how about good eats?  There were also some extracurricular dining ingredients thrown into the mix for the Cleveland trip. Suzanne and Mike suggested we go in search of an Italian restaurant called Geraci’s that they saw on “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.”  Well, Guy sure didn’t steer us wrong on this one.  We decided on their hearth-baked pizza and were very pleased we did.  The marinara sauce was especially tasty and the crust is just right!  When we’re in town again, maybe we’ll try a spaghetti dish with that scrumptious marinara sauce.  Then, on Sunday we had an outstanding brunch at the 100th Bomber Brigade Restaurant near the airport. It’s an interesting place, with memorabilia of the WWII bombers and crew throughout the facility.  Then there’s the array of superb food. It’s difficult to describe the quality selections; shrimp, crab, prime beef, fajitas and omelets to order, chicken marsala, and too many cheesecake and other desserts to list. That’s just a smidgeon of the menu.  And everything tastes fantastic. 

We enjoyed being out on the road in Ferd for a few days after working on our half-time home for the past few months.  And it was doubly nice that we had Mike and Suzanne to share ‘ a wee bit o fun in Cleveland.’

Glad you stopped in at Hurley Travels.  Talk to you later.

Good Times with Good People

Four people just going with the flow and enjoying whatever seemed like a good idea -  That’s how I’d describe our visit this past week with our good rving friends Chuck and Jan Moore.  They were passing through Indianapolis between family in Chicago and friends in Cincinnati.  So we lucked into having time with them for four days. 

We shared lunches and dinners, roamed in cemeteries searching for Hoosier ancestors, shopped for new electronic gadgets, toured the city a little, researched genealogy and challenged each other at pegs and jokers. Of course, some of the best times were our animated gab sessions  catching up on travel stories and laughing about life.

When we first met about three years ago in Quartzsite, AZ, at a Boomer RV rally, we all discovered we had a common interest in genealogy research.  So when Chuck mentioned he was seeking a few Hoosier ancestors nearby, we were ready to take part in his hunt.  We all had fun on our quests to locate graves within the spacious Crown Hill Cemetery in the middle of the city and at a remote, tiny family graveyard in Boone County north of Indianapolis.  And then we went downtown to search for a few more family history details at the Indiana State Library Genealogy Dept., make a quick tour of a few city sites and stop for lunch at Shapiro’s Deli with the yummiest corned beef sandwiches around. 

Over our few days of hanging out together we managed to squeeze in some shopping, jewelry-making for Nancy and Jan, discussions of campgrounds and rv life and plans for wintering in the Southwest.  We even found time for Mexican food at Toucan Annie’s in Cicero and Tijuana Flats in Fishers.    

How nice to have the good fortune to share good times with good people.  Thanks Jan and Chuck.

Sixty Days in Our Lives -- Seems Like Sixty Seconds

We all say it.  TIME FLIES!!!  Lately that’s been especially true for us. The last sixty days or so have included a myriad of happenings.  Let’s see…. renovating and furnishing our condo in Indianapolis, reorganizing, transferring stuff and storing the motorhome, traveling to and with old friends, garage sales, helping family with moving, family birthdays and friend gatherings, family history and family reunions.  A whole lot has taken place in about two months, but it seems like two minutes in time.

The major portion of those “two minutes” relates to our living situation.  I mentioned briefly in a prior post that we decided to take the step into owning a “stick home” once again.  We wanted to add to our options, having some kind of home in Indianapolis, but keeping the freedom to live the rv lifestyle for a number of months of the year.  So, we went on a hunt for something near our family that would be easy to maintain.  We found a condo that seems to fit, small enough not to be too demanding, yet big enough that we can spread out a little for a few months while we visit and take care of business.  About two months ago the process of making this place our own began.  One of the interesting realizations is that after 7 1/2 years of the rv lifestyle some of the skills or knowledge we both had acquired from maintaining homes for years had faded just a tad. I believe some pieces of that home-ownership know-how were overwritten with our rving knowledge: selecting the best roadways, conserving water and energy and finding out-of-the-way parking places.  But we are recalling fast as we get into our latest home projects. As you can see in our photo, the garage is our temporary work room and storage at our new place. Laminate flooring, cut loop carpeting, paint, repairing eaves and gutters, tree trimming and filling rooms of furniture – it’s all coming back to us now. 

However, there have been several welcomed interruptions to the home projects.  A couple of weeks ago we had the easy job of dog sitting for one of our grand dogs, Emma, while Krissy’s friends helped her move.  That was a lot of fun.

 

Then there was the long weekend that Jerry and his good friend, Mike, traveled to Virginia on a quest to find a new home for Mike. Mike’s wife, Suzanne, and their children, Lauren and Sean, will all make the move eventually.  For now, the guys had a scouting job to find a temporary home for Mike. They left Indianapolis on the day that Mike retired from the Indiana State Police after 32 years of service.  There are so many laughs when these two get together that the rest of us can’t translate sometimes. So, we know there were good times on this trip.  (Not sure that Suzanne and I have yet heard all about it.)

We are  excited for Mike on his new adventure with the National White Collar Crime Center in Virginia. They are fortunate he chose to make the NWC3 his next step in life.  He brings his expertise in cyber crime and his excellent training and communication skills.  Our next scouting job will be to find places near Fairmont, Virginia, for rv parking so that we can have our time with them.

And then there’s the short trip that Jerry and I made yesterday, along with about 100 other members of my Niehaus family, to the Pioneer Park in Mooresville, Indiana.  The annual Niehaus Reunion has been bringing my paternal family together since 1939.  The relatives ranged from my Aunt Charlotte, who is 99 and still loves to see all the family at these gatherings, to the tiniest three-week-old infant.  Some of us don’t always remember each other, but all it takes is a few smiles and nods and the conversations start.  The family historian in me was thrilled when one of my cousins from Virginia showed up with photos of my great grandparents who immigrated from Germany in 1885.  Having never seen their faces, I was grateful to my cousin for sharing. This reunion is a time for us to take an afternoon from our busy lives to say hello to many relatives we rarely see, outside of funerals. I am always glad when I get the chance to go.

That brings us to today…..Looking forward to visiting with our RV friends, Chuck and Jan, this week as they stop by on their travels through Indiana.  Next week we’ll get Ferd rolling again for a short trip to Ohio and northern Indiana. Another sixty seconds will pass, I guess.

Glad you stopped by at Hurley Travels. Talk to you later.