So, our vacation to Ohio started out as a reunion weekend. Since we are at least an 8 hour drive from there, I had the great idea to just stay for the whole week. My husband was a bit skeptical of my choice of vacation location, but after looking I found some fun stuff for us to do. Even if he won't admit it--he had fun as well! We were very close to Sandusky, Oh. Which if anyone is roller coaster saavy that is the home of the Rockin' Roller Coast that is Cedar Point Amusment Park. The idea to stay there for the week and go the that park was the first idea and pretty much what fueled my ambition to go there. But after it was all booked and I was looking at heights and prices, I realized that my kids can do the same thing at the Six Flags by our house, and have just as much fun for a fraction of the cost, so that will have to wait until they are older. So, I surfed the web for a bit trying to find things and didn't have the best of luck to find thing. Then I had a thought--'hmmm, there are Groupons for our area, I bet there are Groupons for close to that area!' And I was right. I found 2 great deals on 2 venues the the kids would LOVE! The rest of the week, we visited lakes and islands and just had alot of fun together as a family. So here is a quick rundown of our Ohio-an adventures!
I saw this place on some of the searches I did for the area, but the priced were o~u~t~r~a~g~e~o~u~s, I thought, so I just put it on the back burner. I knew my kids would love it! Who wouldn't love feeding animals out of your window. I remember seeing the vinyl top of a car being ripped off by monkeys at one of them when I was a kid and I just had to share this experience with my kids! Now--enter Mr. Groupon and Bam! Mission accomplished! At close to 75% of the savings off the original price--I can share this magic moment with my kids! And my parents! And my niece and nephew! My kids loved it. Derek loved feeding the animals and Jared loved taking pictures Derek feeding the animals--he enjoyed it a little bit though! But it pretty much was a bunch of field deer, bison, elk and a couple of zebras and giraffe's. They also has a small walk through safari, free camel rides, pig races and an animal encounter show that entertained the kids as well. We were able to go through the drive thru 2 times and it was entertaining the whole way through!
This museum was right outside the gates of our mobile community where we stayed. The price was right so we thought we would stop there for a bit. It wasn't huge, but had alot on the history of aviation and some cool historic planes. I didn't think the kids would remember much about this, but they have talked about the planes they saw a few times since we have been there. So it was worth it. We even got root beer floats at the 50's diner attached to the museum!
This was one of my good finds on Groupon. It made a visit to an indoor water park extremely affordable. And when you are looking for something to entertain kids ages 5-12--this is an excellent fit. All the kids could swim and do most of the slides, so we had a super fun day here, and now it keeps the kids from asking about Great Wolf Lodge all the time! Even at my kids height, they were able to do some of he body slides and all but one of the tube slides. However, they couldn't do the lilly pads!? But they had a vortex pool and hot tub that kids all floated around in like manatees to make up for it. And the bonus of this day--my parents stayed back and did our laundry!
This part of Ohio has alot of islands off the shore placed in Lake Erie. Due to the price of the Ferry's (no groupon for that one!) we decided on one island--Kelleys Island. One of the features this island has is a Glacial Groves monument. A location where you can see where the glaciers came through the area and marked up the ground around it. While it wasn't as big as I would have thought, it was still pretty cool to see some rock that age preserved! Most of the islands there have a great night life, but since we were there with our kids that just wasn't our cup of tea this trip so we decided to try our hand at Geocaching. It has been something Joe has wanted to do for a while and with the technology of smart phones it makes it extremely easy to hunt for treasures these days! We went on a mile or so hike along the edge of the island and walked on rock cliffs to find our treasures but it was worth it! After those adventures including huge ice cream cones and mini golf, we decided it was time to hit the beach!
Lake Erie
This area is blessed to have great beaches along the Lake Erie coast. One of the nice things is that the water never really gets to deep for the kids in the swimming areas. Our kids like swimming at Lake Erie more then the pond at our resort because of the waves. So we spent more time in the lake then we did at the resort. The water and air was the perfect temperature and the kids loved it and swam and played in the sand and swam and played in the sand, every time we hit a beach. It brought back awesome memories of me and my cousins playing on the beaches of Brigantine, NJ where my grandparents used to live.
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