An Erie Weekend

I arrived in Erie late Friday afternoon to enjoy the hospitality of the Barnes Resort. We were having a nice evening until, sometime around ten o'clock, we lost the Baby. As Ang has already posted about that ordeal I will not add much except to say that much more than the weekend would have been ruined if we hadn't recovered her, and I absolutely cannot believe that we found her. When Nate drove us over to see where he and Liv found her I couldn't even believe that they were searching that far away. Baby had better never put us through that again!

On Saturday we went to dinner at what we like to call Smuggler's Dwarf on Gobbler's Knob. That may not be its real name, but we are sticking with it.

Liv and I took pictures of each other. You can be the judge on who won that photography contest!

Lex was being her usual photo phobic self, so all I got were a couple of photos of the back of her head.

This photo is to taunt my mother and the Beaver with the delicious she crab soup that they missed out on. Sorry about your luck!

I had to take a photo of these festively patriotic ladies waiting for a table at the restaurant. Notice that the cane has both a horn and a rear-view mirror attached to it.

After dinner we drove over to Presque Isle to walk along the beach and look for beach glass. Nate found the first piece of beach glass, but I found the most.

We were planning to watch fireworks on Presque Isle, but after our walk we still had some time before dark, so we drove back to a little burger stand called Sara's at the entrance to Presque Isle for some ice cream, then we went back to find a spot to watch the fire works.

Apparently we didn't pick a very good spot from which to watch. We got a few glimpses of far-away fireworks through the trees. The funniest part was that the very second the fireworks ended people were revving their engines and racing to get out of there. The second funniest part was that, as we got back to Sara's we found another big firework display being launched from the park next door. If we had stayed there to enjoy our ice cream we would have had front row seats to a really good firework display. Better luck next year!

On Sunday we decided to drive out to Lake Chautauqua. Some neighbors had told Angie to go out to a little village called Bemus Point to enjoy the lakes and some quaint little shops. We drove through the town which was packed with tourists and no parking anywhere and we decided to try something else. We drove back toward Erie a few miles and stopped at a little place on the lake called the Chautauqua Institution. This gated community houses about 400 year-round residents and in the summer it also houses several thousand summer visitors in cottages, hotels, and condos. They host a summer lecture series as well as ballet, symphony, and opera performances. It is a cool little place, but we didn't really know what to do there other than walk around and buy ice cream. The houses are all beautiful.

We stopped for a little while at the tiny beach. Literally the entire beach was captured in this photograph. We decided this is a lake for boaters, not for beach goers.

Everyone needed to take a little rest in the grass to regain their strength.

Later that evening we stopped at the race track and watched a couple of horse races. I was unable to pick a winning horse either by going with the prettiest one or the one who looked the most muscular. Lex picked the winner on the first race, and Liv picked the winner on the second race.

On the way home from the race track we saw a groundhog sitting in a yard. Now that I have seen a live, wild groundhog all of my dreams have come true and I can die happy.

Thanks for a great weekend, Barnes family!