Punderson State Park

 We had our morning breakfast and then hung around for others to rise and shine. 

Our living room/dining room/kitchen

The hall.  There are 2 bedrooms and a bathroom off of the hall.

Nathan and Robbie's bunk beds

Our room.

The screened in porch.

Our cabin

We decided to go walk the boardwalk.  George S and Amelia (his daughter) were ready to join us.  

George S, Amelia, and Valerie.

Turkey vultures.

Nice boardwalk.

Water lilies.

Possibly a purple loosestrife

Nathan, me, George S, Amelia, George W.

This is supposed to be the swimming beach. It did not look inviting to me. The birds like it.

When we got back from the walk we realized that no one had brought enough lunch fixings.  So George, Dorothy, and I went to the Giant Eagle.  We had a long list of things to get.   We got back at noon just in time for everyone to dig in.  We will plan to have lunches at Dorothy & Ed's cabin.  So we left all of our plates and utensils there with the lunch fixings.

When we were leaving to go to the grocery store we were told that we had to move the car to the main parking lot because for some unknown reason they decided to resurface the roads in the park in the middle of high season.  We managed to carry the 6 bags of groceries back to the cabins from the new parking spot.

The paver

Quite the process.  

Some people were trying to move in to the cabin next to us and the pavers had to hold everything up until they got moved in and then moved their car.  

Nathan and Amelia made brownies.  Then a bunch of people went to the pool while the brownies were cooking.  

When the brownies were done people started arriving in shifts to have some brownies and ice cream.

Some of Ed's side of the family are also here. His sister, Martha and her husband, Paul, and Ed's niece, Mary. 

Mary

Dorothy & Ed

Callie and Valerie. Callie is Valerie's oldest daughter.

Martha

Paul

George S with an exhausted Amelia.

We introduced everyone to Hugos.  They were a big hit. I guess we need to buy another bottle of Prosecco. 

Martin arrived.  

We had a reservation at the lodge for dinner.  We headed over for dinner. Once we started dinner, Robbie showed up.  We had ordered ahead for him so he did not have to wait for his meal.  There were 13 of us in all. Martha had decided to not join us for dinner.  I had a delicious steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans.  No pictures.

Cool gargoyle

There was a party going on by the lake.

Sunset

After getting back to the cabin, some of us went on the board walk again.  It is a nice walk.

Moon with reflection

Robbie is staying in our cabin.  George S came over so that he could join Nathan and Robbie for games.  They decided to play 10, 9, 8 so George and I joined them. 

Chicago to Cleveland

 We got mostly packed up and then headed over to Linda and Aaron's at 9 am. 

Sonata's new best friend

We headed to the Wicker Park Farmers Market, which happens every Sunday from May to October.

I have never seen purple cauliflower.

We wandered around looking for what we wanted for breakfast.  I guess the donuts are the big  attraction, but I was not in the mood to have a donut.  I wanted something savory. 

I got the scrambled egg one.  I also bought the jackfruit one.  We have had quite the discussion here on jackfruit vs durian.  I decided to be brave and test my memory of the smell of jackfruit.  I am guessing that what I smelled in the stalls in India was durian and not jackfruit.  But they sold both in India. Anyway, this was a BBQ Jackfruit and it wasn't bad. It would have been better with a better recipe of BBQ sauce. 

George got a brownie

Nathan got a more traditional kouign-amann.

Having our breakfast by the fountain.

Love her outfit with matching purse.

Squirting water with a squirt gun into the fountain. 

A traditional raclette experience.  I don't know if you can zoom in to see the bubbling melting cheese.

After Linda and Aaron did a little produce shopping we walked back to their place.

We played a round of 7, 6, 5.  This time Aaron was the winner.

When Linda and Aaron left to go to a dog obedience class with Sonata we all left to go to lunch. Aaron recommended Lottie's Pub.  It is the bar which is used as Molly's in Chicago Fire.

Remember this.

Too bad the trees are in the way, but this was the house used in that episode of Chicago Fire.

"Cool" purple house. 

Lottie's Pub

If we hadn't been pressed for time I would have had a Mollys beer. It was noon when we got the pub and we needed to check out and get on our way by 1 pm. We had arranged for late check out at 1 pm instead of noon.  We got to the hotel at 12:55 pm and we were locked out of our room!  We had to go get a new key to get in, so that we could check out.  We were on the Blue Line train to the airport by 1:15 pm. We got to the airport in plenty of time.

We left Chicago about 15 minutes late but we made up the time and arrived in Cleveland pretty close to on time. It was a short flight but I thought that I had time for a glass of wine.  Darn. I didn't have the correct App or whatever to buy it.  Luckily, the flight attendant was nice and gave me the wine anyway.

We went to pick up our rental car. Then headed out.  We had arranged to meet Ben, Erin and kids at a Lebanese restaurant in Independence, Aladdin. Erin had heard that it was good.

Tired Sean, he has been at an exhausting scout camp. (I think)

Ben, Robbie and Nathan.

Davey and Robbie

Erin and Robbie

Beb, Sean, Davey, Robbie, and Erin (Erin sent me this picture later)

They all had dessert and we had dinner.  The desserts looked good but I wouldn't recommend the pita wraps.  

We stopped at a Giant Eagle grocery store to pick up breakfast stuff.  We weren't sure what the plan was.  

We got to the Punderson State Park at 10 pm Oho time.  It felt like a long day.  Dorothy and Ed met us at the lodge with our cabin keys.  They directed us to the cabins.  These are nice cabins.  More on that tomorrow.