SUMMER IN OHIO

Monday, August 14 -  Weaver's Cellar Wine has been busy this summer fermenting additional flavors for winter enjoyment while on the road. That called for adding on to the cellar wine rack.

Time to add on.

Now that should hold just about all the wine Marsha can drink in one winter!

Now that is more like it.

She kept Paul busy bottling the wine. Here he is using the machine to install the corks in the bottle. Funny how easy it is to remove that cork when so much effort is needed to get it in there.

Speaking of making wine, Marsha loves a good party! She has had a summer wine tasting party for over five years. We enjoy visiting wineries during our travels, and Marsha enjoys sharing that wine with family and friends. This year, many of the attendees brought along a bottle of wine they purchased on vacation or at a local winery.

Dave, our son-in-law, volunteers to act as the sommelier, but no one ever told him he would have to wear an apron this year! Doesn't he look cute!

We were thrilled to have a good group at the party. Our youngest daughter, Carrie, was here from Houston to enjoy the event. She brought a couple bottles along that didn't fare well with the guests. They were voted the two worst among the fourteen bottles judged. She said we don’t have “real” wine taste buds…lol

Both wines Carrie chose didn’t fair so well.

Carrie was here for five days. We spent a couple days at Kelly and Dave's home in Chardon, OH, which is in the heart of Ohio Wine Country. So of course, we visited several wineries and enjoyed some tasters.

Kosicek Vineyards

Kelly took us on a hike in one of the local county parks, The West Woods, Geauga Park District. This is  in extreme NE Ohio which is a very beautiful area. It is not far from Lake Erie which means large amounts of SNOW in the winter. Carrie enjoyed a few days of relief from the Houston 100 + temperatures. We sure enjoyed our visit with her! We'll see a lot more of her later this year with our stay in the Houston area over the holidays.

We enjoyed the hike with Carrie so much, we hiked in a different area while visiting Kelly and Dave on another trip to Chardon. This time we checked out Ansil’s Cave Trail. Kelly and Dave enjoyed the trails so much that they vacationed in Moab, UT, and the Rocky Mountain NP near Denver, CO, for about ten days this summer.

We had to watch our footing.

Sharon Conglomerate.

A couple of cute bridges.

We still have more planned for our Ohio summer. We have a trip to Gettysburg, PA, and then back to Ohio for Marsha's dad's 90th birthday in early November. Paul keeps saying we better get out of here before the snow flies, and Marsha assures him we will. Check back and maybe you'll see Paul high tailing it down the road with Marsha shoveling snow in the background!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day!

SUMMER HOME IMPROVEMENTS

August 13 – We've enjoyed our summer in Canton, OH, and have kept pretty busy catching up with family and friends. Marsha has filled every available minute with her girlfriends and of course her crafts. She makes Paul feel like “a lazy sit-around-and-do-nothing guy.”

Paul did complete his residing of our summer home. He's been slowly working his way around the structure over the last three years, replacing windows, fascia, soffit, and the vinyl siding. You may notice in the second picture he removed the garage window before re-doing the siding. No use spending money on that window (there are two other windows in the front of the garage) and fewer windows helps with security!

Dave and Kelly (son-in-law and oldest daughter) keep volunteering to help, so we took them up on their offer and put them to work power washing the fence and part of the house. Amazing how dirty things get in just a couple years. Dang acid rain I guess.....:-) Notice we pulled off the cleaning WITHOUT killing any of Marsha's landscaping!

Paul and Dave work together to get the job done.

Then it was on to the house.

Lucky Ohio hasn't experienced the unusual heat much of the country has had this summer. Paul lived up in the attic for a couple days adding insulation. You can see in the photo that the insulation wasn't even to the top of the ceiling joists. Yep...that's Paul squeezed in there. He's installing vent baffles before insulating to allow air to circulate up through the soffit and out the ridge vent.

Before

This photo shows the amount of insulation he blew in with the help of Marsha's brother, Rick. He loaded it up with nearly 18” of cellulose insulation. Did I mention it gets COLD in Ohio in the winter! That's why we get the heck out of here and head south!

After

Now “on to the roof!” Thankfully for Paul, Marsha said, “no way” when it came to him replacing the roof. There were two layers of shingles to be removed, a couple soft spots to repair, ridge vents to install and a chimney to flash. Paul can't believe Marsha felt he was getting too old to tackle such a project. Jeesh!

Being close to Amish Country and many awesome contractors, we decided to hire a crew for this task. Five Amish workers came in and completed the entire job in one day! After Paul's close inspection, he said it was one of the best completed jobs he ever hired anyone to do.

They removed the two layers of old shingles before lunch. The replacements were delivered by another Amish company and placed on the roof just when they were needed.

You can see there was a soft spot around the chimney that needed repaired. Thank goodness we didn't have a leak when we were away for the winter!

Marsha was thrilled no plants or shrubbery was destroyed. The guys covered everything and did a magnificent job cleaning up when finished.

The finished roof.

That's only part of our summer accomplishments. We have more to cover in a future blog, and we have some trips to report on. So check back as we catch up on our “days of summer!”

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day.

CANTON, OHIO FOR THE SUMMER

Saturday, April 22 – We headed out of Blytheville, AR, early again this morning to do a little catching up from our disaster yesterday. Of course, it was raining but fortunately nothing very heavy. We traveled most of the day diagonally through Kentucky heading for a stop in Verona, KY, which is just south of Cincinnati, Ohio.

We have stayed previously at Oak Creek Campground in Verona, Kentucky. They offer a Good Sam/Escapee discount but are still near our top threshold at $27 per night. It is a super location just a couple miles off the interstate making it a great over-night stop. There just aren't many RV parks in the Cincinnati area. They have gravel streets and sites with 50 amp electric and water. No sewer connections at the sites, but they do have a dump station although in a crazy location.

Looking right.

Looking left.

This should be our last night on the road before reaching our summer spot in Canton, OH.

We are now at our summer home in Canton. We will not be posting much during the summer. We aren’t into posting each day about regular daily activities. Hope y’all have a super and dry summer.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y’all back real soon. Have a great day.