Parks

In our last "Travel" blog post about our Great Britain adventure and Stuart's two backpacking trips we promised to do this follow-up post with information about our August 16-23, 2026, vacation, as we traveled home from Vermont.

Since Stuart was on the trail, Julie planned all the details for our vacation -- seeing the fun places we visited confirms the excellent job she did! We want to share with you some of the highlights of our vacation in Massachusetts and New York at the following locations:

• Monday, August 17, 2026 - Norman Rockwell Museum

• Wednesday, August 19, 2026 - Watkins Glen State Park Gorge Trail and Town of Watkins Glen

• Thursday, August 20, 2026 - The Solar Powered Buffalo Heritage Carousel

• Thursday - Saturday, August 20 - 22, 2026 - Niagara Falls USA and Canada

• Saturday, August 22, 2026 - Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum

• Sunday, August 23, 2026 - Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center

We are sharing where we visited to encourage you to see these interesting spots.

Stuart was so busy on backpacking adventure travels during the summer of 2026, and Julie had so many musical and other commitments, that time ran out for writing about the big trip that we took to Great Britain in the spring. We are writing this in September 2026 to first share a bit about Stuart's two summer backpacking trips, and then talk about our Great Britain adventure:

• Summer 2026 Backpacking Adventures:
  - June 15-25, 2026 - Susquehannock Trail System (STS) Circuit Hike
  
  
  
  - July 17 - August 16, 2026 - Appalachian Trail Month In NH/VT
  

• Great Britain!
  

• Two Days On Our Own In London

• Saturday May 23, 2026 - More of London and Day 1: Tour Group

• Day 2, Sunday May 24, 2026 - LONDON–STONEHENGE–ILMINSTER–PLYMOUTH

• Day 3, Monday May 25, 2026 - PLYMOUTH. EXCURSION TO CORNWALL

• Day 4, Tuesday May 26, 2026 - PLYMOUTH–GLASTONBURY–BATH–CARDIFF, WALES

• Day 5, Wednesday May 27, 2026 - CARDIFF–BUILTH WELLS–LLANGOLLEN–LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND

• Day 6, Thursday May 28, 2026 - LIVERPOOL–GRASMERE–GRETNA GREEN, SCOTLAND–GLASGOW

• Day 7, Friday May 29, 2026 - GLASGOW–FORT WILLIAM–INVERNESS

• Day 8, Saturday May 30, 2026 - INVERNESS–CULLODEN–PITLOCHRY–ST. ANDREWS–EDINBURGH

• Day 9, Sunday May 31, 2026 - EDINBURGH

• Day 10, Monday June 1, 2026 - EDINBURGH–ALNWICK, ENGLAND–YORK

• Day 11, Tuesday June 2, 2026 - YORK–STRATFORD-UPON-AVON–LONDON

• Day 12, Wednesday June 3, 2026 - LONDON

This is our fifteenth "Travel" blog post! We hope you enjoy reading about these very special trips!

The unusually warm weather on Saturday, April 4, 2026, brought huge crowds out to the annual Sakura Festival in Akron, Ohio. This was Stuart's second time attending the Festival, but it was a first-time visit for Julie and our son, Kevin. The Festival was hosted by the Downtown Akron Partnership.

Sakura is the Japanese word for cherry blossoms. The Japanese cherry blossom trees, planted by the Japanese Association of Northeast Ohio (JANO) along the canal in downtown Akron, were beautifully in bloom. The crowds enjoyed the delicate, pink blossoms as they walked along the canal and patronized the many vendors who participated. There were crafts, and performances by a drumming group and dancers, as well as opportunities to learn about Japanese culture, including a traditional tea ceremony.

Thank you for reading our blog post, and we hope you will share it with others so they can learn about this fun Akron event and scenic trail.

We are so glad that Stuart saw Share the River's re-post on social media of the City of Euclid's announcement about the grand opening of the upland expansion of Sims Park on Saturday, November 15, 2025, at 10:30 am! If you search our past blog posts for "Share the River," you will see why we recommend people follow them on social media and look at their blog posts. It is a great way to learn about fun things happening in our community along our waterfronts (Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie)! We were particularly interested in this opening, since we had walked the Euclid Lakefront Trail and explored Sims Park on Friday, August 29, 2025. We put this blog post together to share:

• What we learned about the history of the Sims Park lakefront area.

• Our experience on our Friday, August 29, 2025, walk along the Euclid Lakefront Trail and through Sims Park.

• The presentation at the Saturday morning, November 15, 2025, New Upland Sims Park expansion Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony.

• Our Saturday afternoon, November 15, 2025, exploring the new Upland Sims Park expansion and the Euclid Lakefront Trail.

We hope this blog post will encourage others to explore the new Upland Sims Park Expansion and the Euclid Lakefront Trail. As a community, we need to continue to open up our lakefront and expand natural areas. We are excited by the progress that we have written about for over a decade.

Is this the end of an era? After 20 years of the Euclid Beach Park Now organization hosting Remembering the Sights and Sounds of Euclid Beach Park, their board voted to discontinue this annual event after this year. Julie was the only board member to vote for continuing this Cleveland tradition in the future. This event has taken place every year at what is now the Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Beach Park. This year's event, on Sunday, September 28, 2025, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, took place exactly on the 56th anniversary of this now-defunct amusement park's closing on September 28, 1969.

There was a huge crowd attending this year's event!!! They enjoyed the amusement park displays, carnival food, and the special car show entitled "The Cars We Drove to Euclid Beach." With such a large, enthusiastic level of participation in 2025, we hope that some sort of amusement-park-related event will be created to replace this 20-year tradition in 2026.

The memory of the former Euclid Beach amusement park has a bright future in the form of an enlarged Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Beach Park and a new City of Cleveland Euclid Beach Arch Park.

We were fortunate that the eighth annual Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Asian Lantern Festival was extended beyond its original August 24th end date, since we had just returned from our second trip this summer. Nine years ago, we enjoyed a similar event in Columbus, Ohio, during the winter (December 30, 2016, Ohio Lantern Festival at the Ohio State Expo Center and Fairgrounds), but we had never attended this annual Cleveland summer event. We put together this blog post to show the good time we had when we visited the zoo with our sons on the evening of Saturday, August 30, 2025.

We remembered enjoying an acrobatic show many years ago at the Ohio Lantern Festival, so we were very pleased to learn that the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Asian Lantern Festival also had live acrobatic performances.

It was fun seeing the lanterns at the time when daylight melts into evening darkness, and the lights become more brilliant. In addition to the lighting displays, we were fortunate to see the elephants, Amur tigers, grizzly bears, and wolves.

The Asian Lantern Festival had interactive displays, and while we were writing this blog post, we learned that there were more interactive exhibits this year than in the past. We had fun standing on sensor platforms and hitting large buttons that activated the displays.

It was great that the festival was much larger than we expected. We enjoyed the event, and expect that we will go again in the future.

We hope you enjoy the photos and videos from our visit, and that they encourage you to visit the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo next year for the ninth annual Asian Lantern Festival.

We had not vacationed in New Hampshire since 1997, so when Stuart finished a month-long backpacking trip in southern New Hampshire, Julie joined him for an August 17-23, 2025, vacation in New Hampshire, Vermont, and on the USS Enterprise. We put this blog post together to share some of what we explored during this trip.

We want to note that this vacation was after two long backpacking trips that Stuart had already completed this year. Stuart's month-long Appalachian Trail backpacking trip is where he finished the final few miles in Massachusetts before hiking all of the Vermont section, and 50+ miles into the New Hampshire section.

We are sharing our photos and trip observations with you here to encourage you to explore the places we visited.

We had not been to Colorado since 1998, so when we were invited to attend our niece's wedding (celebrating Anna Bonebrake's marriage to Thomas Porricolo), we took the opportunity to extend the trip to include Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, and the Denver area. We were on this exciting trip from Friday, June 13, 2025, through Monday, June 23, 2025.

Due to our other travels, we had to delay writing this blog post, but we enjoyed putting it together as our way of remembering the good times we had in Colorado in June 2025. We are sharing our photos and trip observations with you here to encourage you to explore the places we visited in Colorado.

I put together this blog post to share some of what I saw while visiting eight area galleries in February 2025. There is a variety of artwork presented, which will appeal to the different tastes of different people. I hope this encourages you to visit those galleries that have items of interest to you.

Thank you to the following galleries for an enjoyable month visiting:

1. Wednesday, February 5, 2025 - Picasso and Paper - Cleveland Museum of Art

2. Friday, February 7, 2025 - ArtLens Gallery - Cleveland Museum of Art

3. Friday, February 7, 2025 - Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature and Harminder Judge: Bootstrap Paradox and Birthing Beautiful Communities: Dear - moCa Cleveland

4. Friday, February 7, 2025 - Possibility for Repair and Opening Night for Back in the Dayz - Cleveland Institute of Art

5. Saturday, Friday 8, 2025 - d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland - Zygote Press

6. Friday, February 14, 2025 - Opening Night for Love Is Resistance - Cleveland Institute of Art at Transformer Station (Cleveland Museum of Art Remote Location)

7. Friday, February 28, 2025 - North Chagrin Nature Photography Club - Cleveland Metroparks

8. Friday, February 28, 2025 - Opening Night of the 2025 Student Independent Exhibition - Cleveland Institute of Art

If you have limited time, I recommend prioritizing visiting the Picasso and Paper exhibition and the two Cleveland Institute of Art exhibitions at their main campus building and at Transformer Station.

I am grateful that we have so many galleries to enjoy in our area. I hope you take time to visit the institutions I mention in this blog post! Have fun!!!

Welcome to the 2024 Trail Challenge, a guest led program where you are challenged to complete 10 trails in 10 different Cleveland Metroparks reservations on your own in 2024! Explore new trails, move to better health, discover the wonders of nature, and earn a prize.

This Cleveland Metroparks Trail Challenge 2024 blog post covers the trails I biked (November 3rd and November 9th), and hiked (December 7th through December 23rd). I had already "met the challenge" back in February, but decided to end the year by completing the rest of the land-based trails. This blog post is a continuation of my February 15, 2024, blog post.

Between my Trail Challenge week in February 2024, and my 12 trails in November and December, I have completed every single land-based trail listed for the Cleveland Metroparks Trail Challenge 2024!!! That is a total of 27 trails (15 in Feb + 12 in Nov/Dec = 27 trails) in all 18 of the Cleveland Metroparks reservations listed for the 2024 challenge! (There were an additional four water routes listes that I did not do.)

I updated the image from February 2024 with the additional dates of the reservations that I biked (blue) in November and hiked (red) in December.

I hope this blog post encourages you to get out on our local park trails to do the Trail Challenge in 2025! Please go out and explore our great, award-winning Cleveland Metroparks!