Great Lakes - Day 4

Managed to almost sleep until the 6:30 alarm this morning.  A quick shower to start the day and a breakfast of cinnamon rolls, bacon and eggs had us rolling by 8:00 AM.  We drove to the David A Berger Memorial at the Jewish Community Center about 30 minutes away.  It was a great statue and one of the few pieces of modern art that I felt conveyed the meaning of it's subject.  It was obvious that this symbolized the broken Olympic rings from the 1972 tragedy.  I noted to Luke that here we are, more than 40 years later and the two sides still cannot talk to each other and hammer out a solution.

Jumping back in the camper, we drove another 30 minutes to the James A. Garfield National Historic Site.  I really didn't know much about Garfield other than he was our 20th president.  I'm sure I've hear about him from civil war battles and other sites we have visited but he had never stood out for me.  Touring his home was eye opening so here are a few observations:
1) His mom was a powerful force in his life and really believed in him.  As the youngest child the whole family really helped him to become who he was.
2)  He was incredibly well read.  There were over 7000 books in his home and his wife can be credited with creating the idea of the first presidential library.  She added a wing on to their Ohio home 5 years after he died and meticulously arranged it with his books, gifts she received after his death and his papers, which he wrote extensively.  He started keeping a diary in his late teens/early 20's and did so until he was killed.  Those papers are now in the library of congress but the fact that she had a room built that was fireproof speaks volumes to her forethought and desire that her husband not be remembered for the fact that he was only in office 200 days or that he was assassinated.
3)  He opposed slavery and from his own diary entries, I was struck by the fact that we are still having very similar race conversations 150+ years after he was having them.  It seems that we really have yet to learn anything from our own history.

It was a great tour and I learned a lot.  We ate lunch after the park and then drove another 30 minutes into Cleveland.  We got our first look at Lake Erie on the way in.  I'll admit that I have not been overly excited about this trip.  This area of the country is not what I think of when I think of spectacular views of amazing geology like the western states have.  But I'll admit to being pretty floored as we looked out across the lake and could not even begin to see the other side, an island or anything.  It was really like a flat ocean view.  It did give me hope that there may still be something amazing to see up here.

We found a place to park the camper across from the Cleveland Browns stadium and walked over to the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.  We loved it, I would say more than the COuntry Music Hall in Nashville.  Probably because the music was more familiar for the kids.  They had a politics and music exhibit, I assume as a draw for the GOP convention in a few days.  It was very interesting.  I was struck by a letter that the FBI sent to the record producers of NWA's 1989 Straight Outta Compton album about the lyrics and how they might incite violence against the police.  Given the current political and social climate, I was again struck by the fact that here we are almost 30 years after that and we still have not learned how to talk to each other about race, policing, or politics.  In fact, I think we may be getting worse.  40 year, 30 years, 150 years.  None of those years seem to have taught us much.  Humans are pretty stupid.

Lorelei wanted to stop into the Great Lakes Science Center because of the NASA visitor center located inside but we had not built that into this trip.  I guess that gives us a reason to come back one day.  We had originally planned to go to Perry's Victory & International Peace Center at Put In Bay but we are having generator issues and did not feel we could leave Yeti in the camper long enough to go over to the island on a boat.  So we opted to leave the the Rock N Roll and make a quick detour to the house that was used in The Christmas Story.

It was a pretty good tour, they tell you the story of how the house came to be used, how it was used and how it became a museum for the film.  Pretty neat story and the little bar across the street even has a leg lamp in the window.  We took our pictures, had fun exploring the house and laughed at the kitschy stuff in the gift shop.  Honestly, I would come back to Cleveland in December just to run the Christmas Story 5K and have a leg lamp medal.

A 90 minute drive put us near Toledo where we had a great family dinner that allowed us to watch the heavily ladened motorcycle couple a few spots over set up their tent and the girls beat the boys at spades. Tomorrow we head into Michigan.