Esther & I went to visit my brother and his wife in Cleveland, OH this past weekend.

We (well I) originally planned on making this a much longer trip- starting with the Grand Rapids Regional, going to Michigan City Lighthouse for the festivities, roaming around Michigan for a few days visiting Lighthouses and my nephew, visiting my Brother in Cleveland and finishing up with the Grand Lighthouse tour with Dave Hannum!

I don't quite understand it, but when I gave Esther a choice between going to Mi, IN and Ohio for 10 days or Hawaii and Califronia for 17 she chose the later- Go figure!

We flew into cleveland Friday afternoon and spent the evening with my brother David and his wife Carol.

Esther and I intended to get an early start on Saturday so we could get to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, but we did not get up as early as we intende and the morning flew by and we decided to drop that little trip (David & Carol have squired enough people to the Hall).

The weather was not very cooperative on Saturday, but Sunday was a much nicer day.

We did take a drive on Saturday westward and stopped to get a look at Lorain Lighthouse. It was raining quite heavy at this point so no one wanted to get out and get closer so we settled for some pictures from the parking lot near the Coast Guard Base. With the weather they were not very good, but here's one that I manged to fix up a bit.



We continued on to Vermillion for the replica of the Vermillion Light and the Inland Seas Marine museum. It was still raining heavily, but I couldn't interest anyone in getting out and going to the Museum .

I did get a few pictures of the replica. Here's one of them.





We did no more Lighthousing on Saturday- we took a tour of the City of Cleveland and it's little shops. There are many nice areas of Cleveland. We drove down by the R&R Museum and Science Center, the new ballparks, the Flats, Little Italy, Shaker Heights, etc.

We went back out Sunday morning and the day was much better. We drove down to Fairport Harbor and went to the Old Fairport Harbor (Grand River) Lighthouse. You can even climb the Lighthouses 69 steps and go outside the light.

On the way there we drove by a place called the Harbor Lights Coffee house. I stopped and took a picture.



Here's a shot of the Old Fairport Harbor (Grand River) Lighthouse as you approach it from the street.




You can't get up into the Lantern room (which is empty- the 3rd Order Lens is in the museum in the Keeper's House).They have a nice museum there. It's the oldest Museum dedicated to the lore and history of the Great Lakes Maritime History. It includes a Pilothouse from a Great Lakes Ore Boat.

We stopped outside for a semi-group shot after we climbed the tower. Here's a picture of Esther, Carol and David (left to right). Guess who took it?



You overlook the breakwater where the replacement Lighthouse- Lorain Breakwater Light is. We did not walk out there as my sister in law was not keen on that idea, or waiting for us to do it. We did go down to the park along the shore and walked out to the end of the river entrance and got as close as we could get. I got some nice pictures of both Lighthouses here.

Here's one of the Breakwater Light.




Here's one of the old Light from the park behind it.



We drove by the bottom of the hill that the Old Light is on and I got this shot of it.



End of Part One Continued in part 2


Dennis

edited to fix picture links - Dave