Baseball Hall of Fame

This is the next part in our vacation trip...

We left the island Wednesday morning.  The waters were the choppiest they had been during our entire trip, and we had been told that at higher winds we wouldn't be able to leave.  I was concerned when I saw some white caps on the lake when we first awoke, but was told it would be no problem.  It was a rough ride off the island, and I'll be honest, I prayed almost continuously.  The kids didn't mind getting wet though!

We loaded our vehicle and drove to his aunt's house.  She was on the island with us and Andrew offered to drive her vehicle to her house.  I drove our vehicle and picked up Andrew at her house.  We were then on our way south, and driving through Vermont was absolutely lovely.  It is all rural driving, but the weather was awesome.  We stopped at a small country store and did a bit of shopping, and we just really enjoyed the trip...until we hit a glitch.  We had basically just crossed into New York when Andrew realized he still had his aunt's keys!  Ugh!  He called her right away and fortunately she had another set so we were able to express mail her keys back to her.  The post office was right around the corner from where we stopped for lunch, then we were on our way again.

We arrived at our motel late afternoon.  The thing we were all most excited about was a shower!  We hadn't showered at all while on the island, and while Thomas didn't seem to mind one bit, Catherine was practically desperate for a shower.  We drove into Cooperstown (about 5 miles) and enjoyed dinner at Doubleday's Cafe.  The food was awesome!  We checked out some of the cute little shops and had some ice cream for dessert of course!  Why does ice cream always taste better on vacation? 😁

The next morning we hit the Hall of Fame mid-morning (after breakfast and re-loading the car).  The kids really enjoyed getting to see the displays.  I was somewhat disappointed that there was definitely less Reds stuff there then last time (we were there 15 years ago), but we suspect that has something to do with the fact that the Reds have their own team Hall of Fame.  My favorite part of the hall is always the plaques of the inductees, and the Reds have no shortage of representation!  Because Thomas received his late uncle's baseball card collection, he was also excited to see players from other teams.  We checked out the shop, then decided to walk around and visit other shops.  We had a very late lunch, and Andrew and I were especially pleased to eat at the same restaurant we had 15 years ago.  A couple of more shopping stops led to some purchases, specifically a Griffey jersey for Thomas and a Larkin jersey for Catherine, as well as some other memorabilia.  We left late afternoon.  Originally the plan had been to spend two nights in Cooperstown and drive the ten hours home on Friday, but it didn't work out that way.  Lodging was ridiculously expensive there, so Andrew and I decided that we would begin the drive home that evening.  We didn't care how late we left town, because each minute that we drove was one closer to being home.  If it was only an hour, so be it.

We ended up driving a little over three hours before stopping.  We grabbed a quick dinner and turned in fairly early.  We were all tired.  The next morning we set a 7:00 alarm because we were all anxious to get on the road to our sweet Abby pup.  We ended up arriving back at our house in the middle of the afternoon.  Our sweet pup was so excited to see us.  She had a housesitter while we were gone who adores her, but it just isn't the same.

We really, really loved this trip.  We couldn't believe how well Thomas and Catherine got along during the entire trip, and how laidback everything seemed to be.  I am so grateful that we had our vehicle that was so reliable and surprisingly spacious.  It was very much a special trip for our family!