Today we start a new adventure however it is much closer to home than usual. The plan is to fly to Ohio, Cleveland specifically, and then attend a birding festival on Lake Erie which calls itself the Biggest Week in American Birding for a few days. But first we have to leave, even when incoming into the airport the plane already has a half hour delay. And while entering the lounge we see the delay increase to one hour so we settle for a long wait while eating the good food.
And the delay keeps increasing by minute so we have time to sample everything. It looks that maybe we will not be able to leave even as it starts getting to late for our arrival in Cleveland. Even the lounge attendant comes to ask us when we are going to leave and we explain about the delay, it seems we are messing with their reservations.
Finally the plane arrives and it seems we will be able to depart. However at this point we won’t be able to arrive in time for our car rental, the office would be closed already when we arrive so we cancel our reservation and make a new one, lucky that it was not a prepaid one. We board in the first group and get a front seat but otherwise Soutwest A-list that we got via a credit card does not seem to be worth it.
We are really happy when we get in the air as it means that the trip is happening, we were already trying to remember what we can cancel and what not when the delay was stretching over two hours.
As usual we fly initially over areas that we can recognize from the plane including probably the lake where we kayaked just a few weeks prior.
We arrive about three hours later than planned in Cleveland but luckily our new car rental is ready and after about an hour drive we arrive at our AirBnB after midnight. We have just a little time to take stock of what is available, it looks larger than expected but there is really no privacy or soundproofing with doors on both end of the condo.
We are soon ready to go to sleep and try to sleep through various noises like trains whistling, gulls shrieking and the house and heating creaking. Yes we have to turn the heating on as it is quite cold during the night but it will heat up during the next days, we hope.
We have our first guided tour at 8 in the morning and it is a 40 minute drive and we also have to get the badges prior so we wake up quite early unfortunately. In fact we wake up with the sunrise and then eat breakfast before driving to the site and joining the tour and then doing some birding on our own.
After a morning of birding and little sleep we are quite tired and hungry so we find a restaurant near our AirBnB where we eat fish and steak so at least one of the basic needs has been satisfied.
We then drive to the nearby supermarket and buy some provisions and then it is time to go to the AirBnB to have a nap before looking for woodcocks in the evening. And then we spend two additional days birding and exploring without really returning much to the AirBnB except to rest.
On the day we are leaving we have the most time in the morning to spend at the AirBnB so we decide to walk to the shore and explore a bit the area around the AirBnB.
Surprisingly there are quite a few birds here, mostly gulls and Spotted Sandpipers. Still it is fun to see them early in the morning just relaxing or looking for food.
We also see the ferry coming in, it is one of our assumptions that the ferry is the source of at least some of the noises at night besides the train. And then there are the gull nests up top, we haven’t seen them till now but likely they were also the source of the gull noises at night. And then we finish cleaning the AirBnB and out we go towards the airport via a few stops on the way.
