2019 Road Trip – Day 8: Shawnee State Park, Hard Rock Café Pittsburgh, Cleveland

After a somewhat difficult night for me with very little sleep, I was not really looking forward to a full day in the car. Fortunately there was a Starbucks nearby and I felt at least mildly human after a little coffee.  The plan was to get to Cleveland by way of Pittsburgh. Since we didn’t make it all the way to Hershey last night, we had a little more than an hour of extra drive time today.

SHAWNEE STATE PARK

Our fist stop of the day was Shawnee State Park. The park boasts lots of areas for picnicking, canoeing, and general running around, but this was a leg stretch stop, so we didn’t have time for all that. We walked up the hill, spent time looking at the lake, and generally admired the view before the smells of everyone grilling made us realize we were desperately wanting lunch.

Fortunately we had passed a cute place a couple miles back and decided to give it a try. Turns out Jean Bonnet Tavern was a charming historic tavern and had amazing food. It is also a bed & breakfast, for anyone who might be looking for that sort of thing in the Bedford, PA area. Read a full review of our dining experience.

The drive through Pennsylvania is beautiful. You are almost always driving around the curve of a hill… that is, when you aren’t driving through a tunnel under a mountain. Driving through the gentle rolling hills started to make me sleepy after a while. Fortunately, we were almost to Pittsburgh when it got to that point and made it safely to our next stop.

HARD ROCK CAFE PITTSBURGH

Our last leg stretch of the day was at the Hard Rock Cafe in Pittsburgh. I say “in”, but it actually sits outside the city center and has a great view of the city across the river. We stopped long enough for me to have a couple caffeinated sodas, since my morning coffee completely wore off on those Pennsylvania hills. It was just the boost I needed to make it through that last stretch and safely into Cleveland for the night.

After we checked in at the Residence Inn by Mariott in Mentor (NE of Cleveland), we checked Google for local restaurant options and noticed there were some seafood restaurants “on the water”. We decided to check them out and ended up getting one more fantastic east-coast-style seafood dinner before we headed home. Check out my review of Brennan’s Fish House.

 

 

 

 

 

2019 Road Trip – Day 7: Hard Rock Cafés in Connecticut & the Bronx

Today I had planned a jam-packed day full of intense driving and Hard Rock Café stops. We needed to be out of the hotel at precisely 7am to stick to the schedule. Instead we sauntered out of the hotel at a very leisurely 8:30… yikes! The reason for my demanding schedule will be clear later in this post. For now, just know that we started very late, so my schedule was shot to heck from the beginning.

HARD ROCK CAFE FOXWOODS

Because my fiancé collects Hard Rock Café shot glasses, we decided to take the long way home from Boston and pick up a few new additions to his collection along the way. Instead of heading west, we headed south, into Connecticut. Our first stop of the day was quite a surprise. The Foxwoods Hard Rock Café is inside a hotel/casino/shopping complex that is absolutely mind-boggling. When the directions said we were only 5 minutes away, it still looked like we were in the middle of nowhere, with one lone building poking up above the trees. Turns out, that building is the tower hotel part of a huge complex that houses 4 full-size casinos, restaurants, hotels, and an entire shopping center. The Hard Rock was somewhere around the middle. It made for a good leg stretch and fortunately we parked by the Starbucks… yay!

HARD ROCK CAFE NYC (THE BRONX)

Our next stop was the Hard Rock Café in the Bronx on the north side of New York City. Unbeknownst to me, the Hard Rock is attached to Yankee Stadium. That would have been excellent information to have ahead of time (thanks Goggle!), because we arrived about an hour before the start of a Yankees game and the entire area was insanely crowded! My fiancé is not a fan of either big cities or crowds, so our day was starting to turn sour pretty fast. We were able to find short-term metered parking about a block from the stadium. Because the Hard Rock was so busy, I waited outside while he went in to get his collectible. They were completely sold out of shot glasses and he came out disappointed and annoyed at having to deal with the crowds. We ate a quick lunch at an overpriced Subway with no bathroom (stick with me, this is important later) and got on the road as fast as possible.

We drove between Manhattan and the Hudson towards our next stop, the Hard Rock Café in Times Square as the clock started to tick down to around 4pm… on a Friday… the Friday before Labor Day weekend…. in New York City! Some of you might have already discerned where this is going, but for those who haven’t, I’ll continue.

Photo: Flickr / dogseat.

In addition to big cities and crowds, my fiancé really hates traffic, even if he isn’t the one driving. When we took the turn left to head into the city towards Times Square, you would have thought he was going to die. I’ve driven in Chicago a lot, so I wasn’t really phased by the New York City traffic, but he was about jumping out of his skin. The tall buildings, the insane traffic, the noise, the smells… it was all just too much for him and although we were within 2 blocks of the Hard Rock, he insisted we get out of the city and continue on our way immediately.

Despite the fact that we were both somewhat desperately in need of a bathroom, we decided to play bodily function roulette. I got in the mess of cars heading into the Lincoln Tunnel and we very slowly escaped New York City by way of New Jersey. We inched along for what seemed like an eternity and the traffic didn’t ease up for a good 2 hours. By then we were happy to be free, and our bodies had abandon all hope of a bathroom, so we continued on until we finally stopped to eat at a Texas Roadhouse outside Allentown, PA. According to my plan, we were supposed to make it to Hershey, PA that night (about another hour drive), but it was all too much for my fiancé and we ended up finding a nearby hotel, the Parkview Inn, and calling it a day.

Had we left on time (an hour and a half earlier), we would have missed the Yankees crowd in the Bronx and rolled into Times Square around 2:30pm. While it may have still been busy, it is Manhattan after all, the entire day probably wouldn’t have been as much of a trigger for my fiancé. I was a bit disappointed that we abandon hope only 2 blocks from our goal, but I am careful to pick my battles and this was one I’m happy to have avoided.

 

2019 Road Trip – Day 1: Harrison Lake State Park, Presque Isle State Park, Niagara Falls State Park

It’s that time of year again when we hit the road on a new adventure. This year, we’re road tripping to Massachusetts. We’ll take two days to get there and three days to get back, leaving us with 4 full days in the Boston area.

HARRISON LAKE STATE PARK

We hit the road in Michigan City, IN early this morning, despite a short night sleep and needed a little extra caffeine boost to get us going. If you’ve followed my other road trips, you know that I prefer stretching my legs at points of interest rather than at roadside rest stops. Our first leg stretch of a long travel day was at Harrison Lake State Park, just off the turnpike in Ohio. All state parks in Ohio (and many throughout the US) are free to enter, so they make a great place to get out and take in some natural views while stretching those leg muscles. Harrison Lake SP was a perfect place for just that. We took a little walk, looked at the lake, and got back on the road within 30 minutes.

PRESQUE ISLE STATE PARK

By the time we hit our next leg stretch spot, we were out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania. Presque Isle State Park is it’s own island off the coast of Erie, PA and was an opportunity for us to get up close and personal with Lake Erie. During our 2018 Road Trip, we visited three of the five Great Lakes and we’ll get to the other two on this trip, starting today. Presque Isle SP is also free to enter, but would be quite a lovely place to rent a bike for an afternoon. It was a blustery and chilly day for August, so we drove around the whole park, but didn’t spend a lot of time actually on the beach. Just as well, because we only had 1/2 hour scheduled before we needed to get back on the road in order to stick to our schedule.

NIAGARA FALLS STATE PARK

Our final destination of the evening was Niagara Falls State Park in New York. This has been something I’ve always wanted to see, but my fiancé already saw it 20+ years ago, so I didn’t think it would make it on our agenda. Fortunately, it is almost exactly halfway between our home and Boston, so it was a logical place to spend our first night. We decided to make it just an hour visit this trip and come back for a more extended visit on the Canadian side at another time. The Falls are beautiful and we arrived about an hour before sunset, so the sky had that lovely afternoon glow… perfect for pictures! An hour was enough time to visit both falls and take, according to my fiancé, “a million pictures” at each. Make sure to accompany that previous sentence with an overly emphasized eye roll for the proper effect. Obviously we both enjoy different aspects of our journeys together and that is ok.

HARD ROCK CAFE NIAGARA FALLS

My fiancé collects Hard Rock shot glasses, as you may remember from an earlier post. He already has one from his last visit to Niagara Falls, but we visited the Hard Rock Cafe in Niagara Falls anyway because we were starving and he wasn’t in the mood for Indian food, which is in abundance around the Falls.

We finished off the night by finding a cheap Budget Inn outside Buffalo to crash at for the evening. It was cheap, clean and the staff was nice. It wasn’t somewhere I’d make a point to revisit, but it suited it’s purpose and I wouldn’t be sad to find myself spending a night there again on a future road trip.  They also had really strong coffee in the morning, which I greatly appreciate.