Congratulations, City of Aurora, Ohio, for your impressive, new Aurora Park on Geauga Lake!! On Sunday, October 25, 2026, we attended the Grand Opening of Aurora Park at Geauga Lake with our sons, Kevin and Michael.
Stuart was so busy on backpacking adventure travels during the summer of 2026, and Julie had so many musical and other commitments, that time ran out for writing about the big trip that we took to Great Britain in the spring. We are writing this in September 2026 to first share a bit about Stuart's two summer backpacking trips, and then talk about our Great Britain adventure:
The unusually warm weather on Saturday, April 4, 2026, brought huge crowds out to the annual Sakura Festival in Akron, Ohio. This was Stuart's second time attending the Festival, but it was a first-time visit for Julie and our son, Kevin. The Festival was hosted by the Downtown Akron Partnership.
Sakura is the Japanese word for cherry blossoms. The Japanese cherry blossom trees, planted by the Japanese Association of Northeast Ohio (JANO) along the canal in downtown Akron, were beautifully in bloom. The crowds enjoyed the delicate, pink blossoms as they walked along the canal and patronized the many vendors who participated. There were crafts, and performances by a drumming group and dancers, as well as opportunities to learn about Japanese culture, including a traditional tea ceremony.
Thank you for reading our blog post, and we hope you will share it with others so they can learn about this fun Akron event and scenic trail.
We are so glad that Stuart saw Share the River's re-post on social media of the City of Euclid's announcement about the grand opening of the upland expansion of Sims Park on Saturday, November 15, 2025, at 10:30 am! If you search our past blog posts for "Share the River," you will see why we recommend people follow them on social media and look at their blog posts. It is a great way to learn about fun things happening in our community along our waterfronts (Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie)! We were particularly interested in this opening, since we had walked the Euclid Lakefront Trail and explored Sims Park on Friday, August 29, 2025. We put this blog post together to share:
Is this the end of an era? After 20 years of the Euclid Beach Park Now organization hosting Remembering the Sights and Sounds of Euclid Beach Park, their board voted to discontinue this annual event after this year. Julie was the only board member to vote for continuing this Cleveland tradition in the future. This event has taken place every year at what is now the Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Beach Park. This year's event, on Sunday, September 28, 2025, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, took place exactly on the 56th anniversary of this now-defunct amusement park's closing on September 28, 1969.
There was a huge crowd attending this year's event!!! They enjoyed the amusement park displays, carnival food, and the special car show entitled "The Cars We Drove to Euclid Beach." With such a large, enthusiastic level of participation in 2025, we hope that some sort of amusement-park-related event will be created to replace this 20-year tradition in 2026.
We were fortunate that the eighth annual Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Asian Lantern Festival was extended beyond its original August 24th end date, since we had just returned from our second trip this summer. Nine years ago, we enjoyed a similar event in Columbus, Ohio, during the winter (December 30, 2016, Ohio Lantern Festival at the Ohio State Expo Center and Fairgrounds), but we had never attended this annual Cleveland summer event. We put together this blog post to show the good time we had when we visited the zoo with our sons on the evening of Saturday, August 30, 2025.
The Asian Lantern Festival had interactive displays, and while we were writing this blog post, we learned that there were more interactive exhibits this year than in the past. We had fun standing on sensor platforms and hitting large buttons that activated the displays.
It was great that the festival was much larger than we expected. We enjoyed the event, and expect that we will go again in the future.
We had not vacationed in New Hampshire since 1997, so when Stuart finished a month-long backpacking trip in southern New Hampshire, Julie joined him for an August 17-23, 2025, vacation in New Hampshire, Vermont, and on the USS Enterprise. We put this blog post together to share some of what we explored during this trip.
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.
I put together this blog post to share some of what I saw while visiting eight area galleries in February 2025. There is a variety of artwork presented, which will appeal to the different tastes of different people. I hope this encourages you to visit those galleries that have items of interest to you.
Thank you to the following galleries for an enjoyable month visiting:
I am grateful that we have so many galleries to enjoy in our area. I hope you take time to visit the institutions I mention in this blog post! Have fun!!!
