Retired Nomads - Part 2 : Columbus to Cleveland, Ohio

Welcome to part 2 of my blog. The old one was not allowing me to add photos so I have started a new one. You can still access my old one anytime at the old address:

http://agretirednomads.blogspot.com/

**My regular readers know our story, but for new readers here is a short synopsis of our decision to sell everything and collect memories instead of things while we are still healthy enough to do it. I started the old blog just to keep family and friends up on where we were and what we were up to without sending individual emails/phone calls to everyone. It starts at the end of 2012 when we sold everything before going on our first world cruise in 2013 and then moved to Panama for 3.5 years. During that time we traveled all over Panama and did land trips to the Amazon, Antarctica and an East African Safari. Then, we came back to the States to do another world cruise in 2017 and then bought a motor coach and lived full time in that for 1.5 years (minus 2 months while on a 60 day cruise around South America.) We sold the coach in 2018 right before going on another world cruise in 2019. We are now awaiting a house being built in Port St. Lucie, FL. Since we need to stay in a hotel anyway, we decided to see some more of the U.S. and we are doing it by car and staying in hotels. So, I think my blog just got too big with all the photos. Please understand that I don't think the blog is good writing, has perfect spelling, is free of typos or that I even know what I'm talking about. We cruise & travel a fair amount and I enjoy researching tour guides and choosing one for touring. If any of that information helps someone else that is great. Many of my readers are armchair travelers so I write even the mundane stuff. Since it's also a personal blog, it will have whatever else is going on in our lives as well.

So, here is the continuation of our road trip:

Columbus to Cleveland, Ohio – Just a travel day - June 17

This past weekend Columbus had their annual Pride Parade & Festival with over 10,000 people crowding near the downtown area, but we didn’t encounter any crowds when we visited the Statehouse on Sunday. I imagine most of the festivities had finished since it was the last day and after noon. We were expecting traffic delays but encountered none.

We had a short drive today, so we hung out at the hotel until almost lunch time and checked out and went for lunch at Tula Taqueria. Their carnitas street tacos were good, just not as tasty as we have had in other restaurants.

We then headed for the Cleveland area. Ohio isn’t really known for anything food-wise, but they are known for Buckeye Candy. Ohio is the Buckeye State and the Ohio Buckeye is the state tree. The candies are named Buckeyes since they are made to look like the nut that the tree produces. While the seeds may resemble edible chestnuts, the Ohio buckeye fruits are not edible and can be toxic. The candies are made of balls of peanut butter dipped in chocolate. On the drive to Cleveland we stopped at Malley’s and picked up a box of them. They are quite tasty.

Buckeye candies

We encountered some rain on and off today on the drive.

We got checked into the Residence Inn by Marriott Cleveland Avon at The Emerald Event Center. Wow, that’s a mouthful. It’s another nice one with lots of room. We got settled for our short 2 night stay here and headed out to pick up some groceries and then went out to dinner at Donato’s Pizza. We hadn’t eaten in one of those in YEARS. It was just as we like it, thin and crispy with loads of pepperoni.