National Park Service

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.

Princess Cruise Lines 10-Day Denali Explorer - Tour CB3

Itinerary:
| 3 Nights on Land (Fairbanks, Denali) | Wilderness Rail Service to Whittier | 2 Days Scenic Cruising (Hubbard Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park) | 3 Ports (Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan) | 1 Day At Sea | End at Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |

We have always planned on taking a trip to Alaska! For years, Stuart has heard how much Julie wanted to visit the places she learned about from her parents, who traveled the state of Alaska in their camper in the 1980s.

We want to thank Direct Travel Leisure Sales Advisor Mari Ann Casamatta (Office: 440-602-8050) for her assistance in finding the perfect cruise for us. We explained our interests, and she was able to find a cruisetour itinerary that worked with what we wanted to see on our first-time visit to the state of Alaska. This was also our first-time cruise experience, and throughout this blog post, we link to web pages and maps that were helpful in making the most of it. (Be sure to take a look at some of the websites we recommend that might be of interest to you if you are planning a trip to Alaska.) With Mari Ann's assistance, all the details for the air travel and the Princess Cruisetour were successfully rearranged from the trip we originally planned for August 2023 to this year's trip in June/July 2024.

This blog post describes our daily activities, followed by our photos and videos from each day. Our Princess Cruise Lines 10-Day Denali Explorer Alaska Cruisetour went from Sunday, June 23, 2024, through the morning of Wednesday, July 3, 2024. Our Alaska cruisetour included a three-day land journey, followed by the seven-day Alaska Voyage of the Glaciers Cruise on the Grand Princess^® ship. We also added an extra day to our journey on Thursday, July 4, 2024, to explore Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Over the years, I have attended Cleveland Shakespeare Festival shows at many venues around northeast Ohio, and I have even participated in their "Open Mic Shakespeare" nights at Negative Space Gallery and Mac's Backs Books. While I have enjoyed Cleveland Shakespeare Festival actors' performances at all the outdoor venues where I have seen them perform, it was at the James A. Garfield National Historic Site on July 1, 2017, that I learned of the Garfield connection with Shakespeare. I learned that the Garfield family often entertained themselves reading Shakespeare's plays!

This connection that President Garfield and his family had with William Shakespeare made Saturday, July 2, 2022, even more interesting to me as I enjoyed seeing:

• Moreland Hills Historical Society James A. Garfield Birth Site Park

• James A. Garfield National Historic Site

• Cleveland Shakespeare Festival production of Hamlet

I had a truly serendipitous moment that led me to a very enjoyable time talking to a Moreland Hills Historical Society volunteer, Debbie, at the James A. Garfield Birth Site! I had not planned on visiting the birthplace, but happened to drive by it and decided to stop.

On the James A. Garfield National Historic Site house tour, I took a lot of photos to try to capture the feeling of the house, but you really need to take the tour yourself to experience it.

...The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Congratulations to Cleveland Shakespeare Festival on your 25th season! I am glad to be able to celebrate this accomplishment by attending your production of Hamlet at a fitting location -- the James A. Garfield National Historic Site.

I want to thank the James A. Garfield Birth Site, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, and Cleveland Shakespeare Festival for the interesting and entertaining day. I highly encourage you to participate in the activities of these three organizations.

I hope this blog post encourages you to explore theatrical productions of Shakespeare’s work, and to learn about the 20th U.S. President's life in Ohio.

My plan was to slowly complete, by hiking and biking, all the sections of the Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" over several years. With the onset of the March 2020 COVID-19 crisis, my plans radically changed, and I decided to complete the "Little Loop" this year. Below is the blog post about the Akron Section, which is the third of five Buckeye Trail "Little Loop" blog posts.

This blog post covers my experiences on the Buckeye Trail Akron Section from Thursday, May 7, 2020, through Friday, June 26, 2020.

As we wrote in our other Social Distancing blog posts about exploring our local parks, we continue to be fortunate to have had no illness or death in our family.

We are writing this blog post to:

• First, encourage ourselves to learn about and explore parks that we have not visited before, or further explore past favorites.

• Secondly, capture some of what we learn to share with others now, and to use in future years to remind us of how fortunate we are to have so many great park systems in our area.

We are both sad about activities we love being canceled for 2020, but we want to acknowledge all that we have gained in terms of time together learning about local parks and about each other.

We start this blog post with information about how to be safe in the parks during this coronavirus crisis. We also want to note that we added at the end of the blog post information about camping opportunities in our local park systems.

Looking for humor and creativity on the Twitterverse, and visiting parks while social distancing is what my life mainly consists of currently. There is also a lot of sadness about plans being canceled, but my family has been fortunate to have had no illness or death. I try to support those that I see online that are making a difference in our community.

While no day of COVID-19 social distancing is the same, the typical day often contains the following elements: 

• Absolutely no consistency in mornings

• Forenoon - Twitter online distractions

• 2:00 pm coronavirus #InThisTogetherOhio updates from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine

• Afternoon walk in local parks to help deal with coronavirus-related stress

• Evenings are spent watching online movies

In this blog post, I share my experience visiting local parks, and my online life during these coronavirus crisis times.

This blog post will share how we used our fantastic, local parks to deal with coronavirus-related stress starting, on Monday, March 16, 2020. An important part of health is mental health -- go for a walk for both physical and mental health!

We include information in this blog post about using the parks safely during this crisis, and resources to learn more about local parks. We have also included tweets about local restaurants from which we got food "to-go," on our way to or from the parks. It is important to support local business where possible at this time.

We want to thank our local park systems for their work to provide a safe place to explore.

We had four days of fun and four sunsets on Lake Erie!

Our extended Fourth of July weekend, July 1-4, 2017, was filled with many activities, each day ending with a beautiful Lake Erie sunset!

• July 1st Sunset - Lake Metroparks' Lakefront Lodge after Cleveland Shakespeare Festival at James A. Garfield National Historic Site

• July 2nd Sunset - Edgewater Park of the Cleveland Metroparks Lakefront Reservation

• July 3rd Sunset - Lake Metroparks' Lake Erie Bluffs Coastal Observation Tower after exploring both the Lake Link Trail & The Holden Arboretum

• July 4th Sunset - Sunset and Fireworks at North Coast Harbor after Neighborhood Parade

Thank you to all the great organizations that made these four days of fun possible. We look forward to visiting many more Northeast Ohio venues to enjoy Lake Erie sunsets.

This blog post was originally intended to be a short description of a pleasant Sunday morning tour of part of the Flats area of Cleveland. However, as we learned more about Cuyahoga River-related developments, we kept finding additional important facets about which to write.

• A Sunday Morning Hike
• Lunch By The River
• Bike Ride - Scranton Flats
• Ohio & Erie Canal Reservation
• Tweets & Retweets
• A Great Gift!
• Bike The Ohio & Erie Canal
• Sound Of Applause - Live Remote: Merwin’s Wharf
• The Next Gift: Cuyahoga River & Lake Erie Educational Cruise