Wednesday morning I went into work for half a day. When I got home we put the luggage in the car and drove to our local train station to take the Metra downtown to Union Station. I was a little nervous about leaving our car in the parking lot for five nights with an orange Amtrak parking card in our windshield advertising that it would be there for an extended period, but it turned out OK.
We had dinner at Union Station (I had two hot dogs from Gold Coast and Sheri had a burrito from Burrito Beach), and we picked up a couple bottles of soda for the train ride.
The train left right on time a few minutes past 5:30 PM. Sheri rented a couple of DVD's before we left for the train ride. We started up the laptop and started watching Primer almost as soon as we got into our seats. It was nice and really made the time pass quickly. We have a little Y adapter for the headphones so we can both hear without disturbing anyone else. The lady sitting behind us talked on her cell phone for almost the entire length of the movie which took away from the movie a little bit though.
It is a four hour train ride and it was scheduled to get in around 10:30 PM Toledo time, but because of a lot of freight traffic we were about an hour and a half late. We would have watched another movie but we drained the battery and we didn't have an outlet near our seats.
I had my handheld GPS with me and I called Mom and Dad periodically, who was waiting at the train station for us, with periodic location updates. Mom would rely this information to the station master who was glad to have the information because they don't have any kind of real-time train status information. He would make announcements over the station PA and update his sign board. That was kind of cool.
I did not get to bed until around 1 AM. Dad, my brother-in-law Tim, and myself had reservations on a charter boat for Thursday morning at 8 AM in Port Clinton, OH, so we had to get up around 5 AM. I was a little tired with only a few hours of sleep, but once I got going I was OK.
On the way to the boat we passed the Davis-Bessie nuclear power plant while it was still dark out. I thought the big looming silhouette of the cooling tower and the steam was neat and a little eerie.
The weather forecast the entire two weeks before the fishing trip said 3 to 5 foot waves and rain. When we got there the lake was flat calm and not a cloud in the sky.
This picture was taken from our boat while we were waiting to get under way. The boat pictured is the Sassy Sal and is the one we took last year.
We got underway right at 8 AM. As the sun came up the day got even prettier.
Out of the three of us Tim caught the first fish of the day (not of the boat). A nice tasty yellow perch.
Dad caught the most unusual fish of the day. We think it was a gobi; an invasive species to Lake Erie.
If the boat wasn't catching anything after 45 minutes or so the captain would for us to pull in our lines and we would transit to a different location. We did that three or four times. These are some pictures of us and the boat during these moves.
This is our boat after the day of fishing. That's the first mate on board cleaning up.
There were about 15 of us on board. We caught 3.4 pounds of whole fish wish came out to 1.2 pounds of fillets.
Here is a better shot of the Davis-Bessie cooling tower on the way back home.
Tim konked out within 10 minutes of getting in the car and slept hard until we were about 10 from home.
;-)
Crossing the Toledo high level bridge.
When we got back to Mom and Dad's Tim got in his car and went home while I took a quick shower and changed into some clean clothes. Then Mom, Dad, Sheri and myself drove over to Tim and Lisa's to eat our catch. Since we only had 1.2 pounds of perch the girls stopped at the store while we were driving back to Toledo and picked up four pounds of tilapia. We fried it all up in a deep fryer on the patio. Very tasty.
Friday Tim and Lisa had to work, so Mom, Dad, and Sheri and I were on our own. We had fun just being casual around Toledo. We spent an hour of so at Panera talking, reading, showing Dad Google Earth on the laptop, and eating lunch. Then we went to Anderson's and spent an hour or so there. Sheri needed and iced coffee so we stopped at Beaners for a bit, and then we got dropped off at Lisa's office and we went with her to pick up my nephew Shawn from daycare. We spied on interacting with the other kids for a bit before we let him know we were there. That was cute.
We met up with Mom and Dad again and we took Shawn to the mall to walk around and have dinner. Shawn spent the night with us at M & D's. Shawn took a very strong liking to Sheri and wanted to sleep in her bed that night.
Saturday we went to Tim Horton's for a donut and a cup of their excellent coffee. We don't have any Tim's in Chicago and missed them from when we lived in Columbus. It was great. I think I had a dumb grin on my face as I finished my coffee.
We swung by Kroger's to pick up some ingredients for a pot of vegetable soup we were going to make for Sunday. We went home and I helped Mom dice up a turnip, rutabaga, and cabbage for the soup, and then we drove to Tim and Lisa's for the evening.
Tim let me drive his tractor around the yard a few times!
Lisa wanted to take Shawn to his first pumpkin patch and there was a really good one just a couple miles north of their house. The prices were great. We took a pretty long hay ride that only cost $1.50.
They also had lots of farm animals to pet. That is where I met the friendly cow that I posted pictures of previously.
Went back to Tim and Lisa's, and then Tim and I went to Best Buy so he could buy a new wireless router and a USB wireless adapter. I hooked up and configured the router while Tim cooked hamburgers for dinner. Then we watched the Buckeyes lose to Penn State.
Sunday Lisa brought Shawn over to M & D's and we went to the Grand Rapids Apple Butter Festival. That is a great place for people watching, but there was a lot of walking and it wore all of us out.
By the time we got home and Lisa and Shawn said their goodbyes and left we were all too tired to do too much. It was after 1 PM and we had not had anything to eat besides some popcorn and half of a tamale, so we went to Tony Packo's for some Hungarian hot dogs. Yum! Then we went to Meijer to get some snacks and magazines for the train ride back the next day.
We went home, packed, showered, and ate some of the great vegetable soup we made the day before, and then settled in to watch Desperate Housewives.
This morning (Monday) M & D drove us to the train station. We stopped at Tim Horton's again for a coffee and a donut. We expected the train to be maybe be 30 - 45 minutes late getting in. It was waiting for us when we got there 15 minutes before it was due to leave. We got on and our car was very full. We didn't get seats together at first, but when they turned the lights on around 7 AM I asked the military guy next to me if he would trade seats with Sheri.
We got back to Chicago Union Station exactly when it was scheduled to at 9:30 AM. We had a light snack while we waited for the next Metra train back home at 10:30 AM.
We got home and Sheri unpacked and started some laundry. We rested a little bit in bed, and then decided to go to Panera for some lunch and so I could type this post.
We don't know if we will watch TV tonight or watch the other DVD that Sheri rented, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.
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