Mackinac Island Day 2

We started the day off with some breakfast at the restaurant called Seabiscuit Cafe. It was pretty good. Then we went off on a Mackinac Island Carriage Tour and got to ride in a carriage pulled by some horses. The horses were the Belgian Draft Horse and they were huge. This tour took us to Surrey Hills Museum, Arch Rock in the State Park, and a final stop at Fort Mackinac. This was an enjoyable tour and I highly recommend it if you visit Mackinac Island.

After the tour, we walked around the town for a bit and then just rested a bit before going to dinner. For dinner we went to Mary’s Bistro Draught House and I had some pizza which was great.

Arch Rock
Carriage Tour
View from Mary’s
Mackinac Bridge
View from Fort Mackinac

Mackinac Island Day 1

On July 16, 2025 we begun our trip to Mackinac Island for a few days. The trip started out around 8AM and generally went well. We did hit a bit of heavy rain and were forced to stop for a bit, but we were soon on our way again.

We did stop at Cracker Barrel just outside of Flint, MI and it was a bit of a mess. The service was slow and the food was not much to talk about. From there we got some gas and headed out again. I think we only needed to make one last stop before we found the ferry for the trip across.

The ferry that took us across was from Shepler’s Ferry and was called Captain Shepler. The ride across was not too long and was smooth. We arrived on the island probably around 5PM. We had our bags taken to our hotel called the Bicycle Inn and got quickly checked in.

We had dinner at the Great Turtle Brewery and Distillery and it was really good. After dinner we also had some ice cream at one of the Ryba’s Fudge shops and also walked around a bit.

Mackinac Bridge
Island and Grand Hotel
Lighthouse
Looking out from the Island
Fort Mackinac

Daylight Saving Time is here again

It is that time of year again, when we move back into Daylight Saving Time in most of America. There are a few places that don’t, but most of us do. And I am glad it is back. I visited this topic a few years ago in this blog post It is time to adopt year-round DST.

In this post, I put together some graphs to illustration how DST moved useful light later in the day and benefits us in the summer especially when the sun would be wasted early in the morning. We move back to Standard Time around the winter and that does give us some extra light in the morning for a few weeks, but it is short lived. This precious bit of sunlight would benefit us to stay in the evening.

I am already appreciating the change with a sunset of around 7:30PM and it will continue to increase for the next three months. The days already seem longer and more enjoyable.

This is why I think we should end the practice and keep year-round DST. No more clock changing! Maybe one day this will happen and I won’t have to revisit the topic. See you next year, probably.

Styrofoam Recycling December 30, 2021

The City of Hilliard will be running a Styrofoam recycling event on December 30th, 2021 from 10AM – 12PM. The address for this event is 3800 Municipal Way. The one note for the event is that packing peanuts are not accepted. This is a great opportunity to get rid of any Styrofoam collected from recent Christmas gifts.

Northeast Ohio Waterfall Tour October 2021

Over the weekend, we did a waterfall tour and a went on a train ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad. It was a great time with family and even though there was a bit of rain it was enjoyable. I recommend that anyone else interested in these waterfalls use the resources available from Northeast Ohio Family Fun where we found all of the places to visit. At each of the waterfalls, we saw license plates from all around the area, so it was nice to see people coming to Ohio to see our natural resources.

  • Berea Falls 10/23/2021
    Berea Falls
  • Cataract Falls at Mill Creek 10/23/2021
    Cataract Falls
  • Bridal Veil Falls 10/23/2021
    Bridal Veil Falls
  • Great Falls of Tinkers Creek 10/23/2021
    Great Falls of Tinkers Creek
  • Chagrin Falls Waterfalls 10/23/2021
    Chagrin Falls
  • Brandywine Falls 10/22/2021
    Brandywine Falls
Waterfall Tour October 2021

The Digging Has Begun

View of the footings and excavated hole

Yesterday our home building adventure finally started. After many months of waiting after signing the contract and making our design choices, the first step of many in the home building process started. We got our hole dug and the footings were poured. This was an exciting time for us and we are glad to be on our way. It will be interesting to watch it go from a flat lot of dirt into our home of our dreams. I will try to document as much of the process as I can. This should be a fun time and also a stressful time as we continue to prepare to sell our current place. Let the journey begin!

Images have been moved back home

Back when I first started this blog I hosted the images with the WordPress Media Library. Then I found a cool service called B2 Backblaze which works like Amazon S3, but at a fraction of the cost. I was not able to find a huge need for the service, but I decided to try offloading the blog images there to allow for quick access and to take the load off of the server.

However, over the years, I have found it to be tedious to upload the images on B2, grab the URL, and put it in the blog. So late last year I decided to go back to the WordPress Image Library. The biggest problem though were that I had almost 250 images stored in B2 and had to migrate all of them back to WordPress eventually.

Well I am glad to update that effort is finally done. I did not have that many posts, but uploading the images and fixing the links too a long time to complete. It also was a good time reviewing all of my old posts and reminiscing. I am still using B2 to store my website backups, but all of my files are not accessible to the outside world anymore.

NFL Draft in Cleveland

Terminal Tower with the Browns logo 4/30/2021

This past week and weekend the NFL Draft was in Cleveland. We went up on Friday afternoon and did some of the activities around the stadium. It was a great experience and there were a lot of people out and about which was nice to see.

One of the really cool things was that the logo and team colors were put up when they were on the clock. We grabbed this picture when the Browns were drafting.

We stayed at the Renaissance Hotel and were not far from First Energy Stadium. It was pretty chilly with the lake wind, so we watched most of the 3rd round back at the hotel lobby bar and got some food.

This was the first overnight trip of the year. Hopefully there will be many more to come!