This past Tuesday (July 21) AJ and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary! We took Thursday and Friday off work, so we drove up Wednesday night to Port Clinton, Ohio. Just an easy 2 hour drive. It was so nice to not have a deadline to be anywhere, just drove up once we got everything packed. We brought a bottle of wine and managed to get to Rite Aid AT 9:00 as they were closing the doors so that we could get the bottle opener that I forgot (oops!). So anyway, we spent the evening with pizza and wine and TV. That alone is my idea of a wonderful vacation :)
We woke up Thursday at around 9:45 (be jealous), still made it in time for continental breakfast at the hotel, and then headed out to see the sites. It was raining so we just drove around for a while before deciding to head over to South Bass Island. A fact that I didn't know before this trip is that Put-in-Bay is a village ON South Bass Island, the island isn't actually called Put-in-Bay. Anyways, we took the ferry over and as we did, it stopped raining. We rented a golf cart in case of more rain and drove into town for lunch at Put-In-Bay brewery - delicious!!
We spent the day driving around and getting our bearings..the island is really very small by golf cart, so we saw a little of everything. Keep in mind that on a Thursday during the day, there isn't much of the weekend drinking crowds, so it was nice and quiet. We did some walking around in the shops and saw some touristy things and a lighthouse and then headed back to the ferry when the rain started again.
Friday we woke up at 9:30...I love vacation. First we went to this Drive thru African Safari Wildlife zoo. I had seen it advertised and just had to see what it was all about. AJ did NOT have any interest in going, but humored me. It literally was a drive thru zoo, the animals came right up to your car and ate feed that you got as you drove in out of your windows. There were mostly deer and reindeer but some zebras, giraffes, bison, buffalo, some animals I didn't know what the heck they were! The pictures kind of say it all. For the most part we were both terrified of the huge reindeer, they would put their entire head and torso in your window looking for food - well at least that's what we observed happened to other cars. We kept our windows rolled up until the baby deer were the only ones around! AJ was nervous for the car when the animals seemed they were going to eat it or knock it over, but he enjoyed himself. Next we headed to Mon Ami winery on Catawba Island. They weren't doing any tours, but we did some tasting of some great wine and bought a few bottles to celebrate our anniversary. They even gave us complimentary wine glasses that said Happy Anniversary from Mon Ami - very cool. Finally, we headed back to South Bass. We had planned to see Kelleys Island as well, but knew there was more we wanted to do at south bass, so we decided to save that for next years trip. We got to the island (the ferry was about 20 minutes to a half hour depending on how many cars were on the ferry weighing it down) and rented bikes this day because the weather was sooo nice. We went to the state park to check out the camping scene (where we will definitely go back to!) and then rented kayaks. I don't think either of us anticipated how much work that was going to be and there was so much boat traffic that it was really really wavy - AJ actually got seasick! But we kayaked for about an hour and a half before heading back in for dinner. So it was Christmas in July at put-in-bay and apparently that is a big drinking holiday...as it seems most weekends are there, and so we got back off the island before we observed too much craziness. We spent a little time driving to Marblehead to see the lighthouse before heading in for the night.
Saturday morning we headed home early for AJ to be in Sean Geraghty's wedding. It was a really nice ceremony and reception - so nice to be a part of and a really happy day for the families you could tell. I'm not ready to go back to work this week, but I am so grateful I got to have a nice little vacation with AJ!
I'll have to get Aimee over here again to show me how to post the pictures in slideshow form - it takes way to long to post them one by one! So for now, photos to follow!