Although the weekend didn't go nearly the way we had planned, it was still a pretty good weekend as far as weekends go. I don't know as though I would have made the choice to visit Cleveland on this particular weekend had it not been for the fact that our niece was playing in a softball tournament nearby. Given the fact that neither 
I took a couple of days off, and on Thursday morning after taking care of some family stuff we hit the road on our way to Cleveland, Ohio.
It's only a four hour drive which isn't too bad, we make that drive to Columbus, OH all the time to visit my inlaws, so it was really no big deal. On the way out, I decided to avoid the major roads and once we were out of Michigan I got us on highway 2 that runs along the southern coast of Lake Erie.
It takes you right by the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station which is pretty impressive. I have photos of this place from a previous trip, but on that trip there wasn't smoke rolling from the stack like there was this time, so I asked
It's honestly pretty nuts just how close you can get to this place, the road literally takes you right by it. I'm talking within a thousand yards or so of the stack, it's pretty crazy. Feel free to look it up on Google Maps and you will see what I am talking about!
As we got closer and closer to Cleveland, the skies started to open up and a constant rain started to fall. The roads in the city actually started to flood and by the time we had arrived, we found out we were right in the middle of a flood warning.
With the weather not cooperating, and our relatives not getting into town until later that day, we realized walking around downtown wasn't going to be an option, so we shifted gears and decided to do something else.
As we were still heading into town,
According to the Internet, they are undergoing a $135 million dollar expansion project which will add 50,000 square feet to the building and will be completed by 2026.
It seems everyone had a similar idea to us because the place was packed when we got there. It was almost a bit hard to navigate the place with all the people. I will be writing a full post (or two) about the Hall of Fame at a later date.
It's almost ridiculous how many photos I took. Between my wife and myself I counted something like 244 photos from the entire weekend. Fair warning!
Later that night our relatives got into town, so we had dinner at a local bar and then retired to our hotel. It was busy, but fun day.
Friday was dedicated entirely to softball. My nieces team had two games on Friday that were spread out through the day, so it left us very little time to actually do anything besides watch softball. Which honestly is fine with me, that was the main reason we were visiting anyway.
Unfortunately, by the end of the day, the rain had come back and it wrecked havoc on the schedule for the rest of the weekend.
Saturday, my niece only had one game and it was later in the day, so we took the morning and headed down to the West Side Market in downtown Cleveland to check it out. Again, I will be writing a full post about this place at a later day. It was pretty amazing though.
There was just about anything you could imagine in this space. I'm guessing it is similar to many of the markets you find in cities around the world, but we don't have too much stuff like this where I live in the US, so it was pretty cool to experience it.
We then headed to a local outdoor mall so my niece could do a bit of shopping herself (she is a teenager after all!). My brother in law just sat outside and tried to avoid the sun while the ladies went into various stores to look around.
Eventually, it was time for the last game. With all the rain they had gotten, they shortened the schedule of the tournament and eliminated all the games that were supposed to be played on Sunday. We decided to call it a trip and after this last game we hit the road to head home pulling into our driveway around 10:00 PM on Saturday night.
We are in the middle of something called a heat dome right now, so it was blazing hot on Saturday afternoon with temps reaching the 100 degree mark after the heat index. We had to sit away from the field in the small sliver of shade we could fine. Much respect to the crazy folks who enjoy sitting in the full sun!
My English/Western European genes and skin would have had me burned to a crisp in no time!
Cleveland was an interesting place, though I don't know if I would ever visit there again. It became a running joke with our in laws that anytime we saw something that made us say "what the heck", they would just laugh and say "it's Cleveland". Like what is that person doing, or what is that person wearing, or what did I just see?
It's Cleveland...
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
