Secret Vacation: 50th HS Reunion, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

This all started because we have SIRIUS radio in our car… because when you buy a car you can get it for about 5 bucks a month for a period of time. Michael is crazy about the Beatles, so he always has it on the Beatles station, while I always put it on the 70’s station. Anyway, I get in the car one day after Michael had driven previously and when I start up the car I heard ‘’yes folks, yearlong Beatles exhibit, don’t miss it’’….and I’m hanging on her every word…but she doesn’t say anything else…I just got the tail end of it :~(. So, when I get home from my errands, I GOOGLE ‘’yearlong Beatles exhibit’’ and it comes up that it is happening in the ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME….well, who the heck knows where that is? So, I GOOGLE ‘’where is ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME’’…and it’s in Cleveland…OHIO! Maybe not a very glamorous place to visit, but I immediately start planning to go.

In June, I asked Michael if he was willing to go on vacation without having any idea of where we were going, and he immediately said yes! (I knew he would...he's just the best hubby ever!!!) AND, I called Janice to see if she and Dennis wanted to go as well…since Dennis is a big Beatles fan too. They had too many trips planned, and the date didn’t work for them, so they begged off. Luckily while I was trying to figure out when to go, Michael reminded me that he wanted to try out for NATIVE GARDENS at Fort Mill Community Playhouse (that’s how long ago I started), so I looked up the performance dates. Good thing I did, as I was originally planning to go on vacation in September, but the play dates made me move it back into October…October 2nd to be exact. Now, I had already been receiving emails about my 50th year high school class reunion in Pittsburgh….which I had been ignoring as I never had any intention of going. I start to get FB messages from 2 really close friends in high school…and I am swayed and start thinking about going….but the reunion is on the 9th….and I can’t really stretch our vacation so that we are still up north on the 9th….sorry, but Cleveland doesn’t have that many things of interest :~). So, I was bumbling along…making my plans….when finally I realized that if I moved our vacation to the following week, we could go to the reunion first, then drive over to Cleveland and voila….it all came together. So, we’re all set and I’m anxiously counting down the days to vacation and I go over on a usual visit to Janice and Dennis for 5 days. Somehow during the course of our talking, Janice tells me that SHE AND DENNIS ARE MEETING US THERE!!!!!!! They couldn’t do it when we were going on the 2nd, but since I moved it to the 9th…they can go!!! She was going to try to surprise me, but I never knew our hotel when she would ask….so she just told me instead. It’s a good thing, because I think if they had surprised me at the Hall of Fame….I totally would have screamed, and then my head would have exploded!!! So…we worked it out that we would all meet up for dinner on Monday night (unbeknownst to Michael) and would be touring the R&R Hall of Fame together on Tuesday (which would be the second day for us). I had always planned to go for 2 days since I knew we would only be there for a few hours on the 1st day. Trust me, it was VERY hard not being able to talk to my honey about this!!! I kept thinking of things I wanted to tell him…or talk over with him…..then I would have to bite down hard on my tongue!

So…the days are going by…and I am thinking and thinking about this vacation…and then Janice calls me a few days before we are leaving to tell me that Dennis has come down with a virus...they have no idea where he got it, but it definitely wasn’t COVID) and the doctor said he would be contagious for 5 – 7 days…and it is during that time that we would be meeting…so they drop out :~(. I am very sad…but very glad that she is thinking about our health.

So, we hit the road just before 7 AM on Sunday (10/9). Michael asked me a series of questions along the way…to try to figure out where we were going. Of course the first question he asked his (totally geographically challenged wife!) was ‘’how many states are we going through to get to our final destination?’’ When we stopped for a quick breakfast, I took at peek at the triptik and counted 4 or 5. He eventually asked if we were going leaf peeping, but I told him that was just an added bonus. I tried to give him other hints along the way….but I guess I’m not a great hint giver. On one of the interstates, we were getting off at exit 72 and I told him that was a significant number. That didn’t give it to him, so I asked him how long ago 1972 was….and when he said 50 years….he realized that we were going to my 50th high school reunion (over the summer he had seen a paper on the breakfast table, talking about the reunion). I had hoped to get to Pittsburgh by 3 PM and that’s exactly what happened. We had a bit of time to get freshened up before heading to the ballroom for cocktails, dinner and dancing.

When you have a graduating class of over 700….you really only hung out with people in your activities…and for me that was chorus. There were several people there that I remembered, but before we even left South Carolina, I had agreed to sit with Vicki (best friend from 6th – 12th grade) and Rich (BFF from 10th through college). Michael tried to get pictures of the people I remembered:

-Vicki Ivancik

-Rich Hooper

-Don Dorsch (being his usual comic self)

-Marianne Reis

-Butch Adams

-Karen Dougherty

-Marcie Clark

-Vicki Ivancik, me Marcie Clark

And Vicki brought me an exquisite scarf:

Here's a picture of my scarf, stretched out on the frame as she was painting it:

She makes and dyes in different mediums and the items she shows on FB are all gorgeous…I can’t believe she made one especially for me! Here are some other examples of her art:

I think I have only been to one other reunion, and I am really glad I went to this one!

Monday morning (10/10) we left Pittsburgh for Cleveland….and we really lucked out. We were in downtown PGH and I think it would have been extremely difficult to find our way to the interstate to leave…but Monday was a federal holiday and downtown was deserted…lucky us! Once again, there were questions and clues along the way, until he finally figured out that we were going to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which included a special exhibit all about the Beatles (Michael is a huge fan). We checked into our hotel and headed over:

WHAT A PLACE! I really set up this vacation for Michael, but I can’t believe how much I liked it as well. I hope you can take some time to check out the pictures and videos as this place is way more interesting than we ever imagined. We spent the afternoon there….had dinner and collapsed in our room…then headed back on Tuesday. We were there again until around 2 PM:

-this was one of my favorite Beatle exhibits....each album would light up, and then there would be a video about several of the songs on the album and how they came about

-they even had several rooms of instruments where you could play along with various tracks of music:

It really was an incredible place and we were totally beat after our 2 days there.

Michael had realized that the house from THE CHRISTMAS STORY movie was in Cleveland…and we both love that movie and watch it every year….so we headed on over there:

Then we headed across the street to the museum:

-this is fan art...maybe Michael will draw something and send it in....

The Bumpus house (remember the turkey stealing dogs?) was right next door:

We had an early dinner and once again collapsed into bed! We were up early Wednesday morning (10/12) and I drove Michael to Sleepy Hollow golf course (rated 13th best public golf course in the country):

for a round of golf, while I headed out to find a few quilt stores :~). The first 2 I found must have gone out of business during the pandemic….but the 3rd was a lovely shop and I got some beautiful fabric:

I was plugging in the address of a 4th, when my honey texted that he was already done playing golf!! I swung by and picked him up, and we headed towards home, stopping in Parkersburg, WV to break up the trip. We had a leisurely breakfast Thursday morning (10/13), and made it home just before 4 PM.

Of course, as we were unpacking Lucy was excited by an empty tote on the floor:

It was a wonderful trip and my honey was surprised and thrilled about everything. We put 1,232-1/2 miles on our car with this trip!

*** I love putting on warm underwear fresh out of the dryer….plus it’s fun to look around the Laundromat and guess who they belong to. ***

*** At my age, a trail of clothes leading to the bedroom means I dropped them on the way from the dryer. ***