Midwest Road Trip leg 2: Ohio to AZ

 After spending a week visiting family in the Chicago area, we headed over to Ohio to visit our friends who had just moved to the area.

They took us to the Gervasi Vineyards and Winery. Vineyards...in Ohio? Yep, who knew?! We sampled the wines, which exceeded our expectations, and took advantage of the beautiful weather to stroll the grounds.

Our friends live near Chagrin Falls, which is a charming small town with a very cool main street area.

We enjoyed our visit together and loved walking around town and seeing the namesake waterfall.

We decided not to retrace our steps so we took a different route on the way back West, which took us through Omaha, Nebraska. We didn't have a lot of time in town, just long enough to eat dinner, visit one of the largest candy shops we've ever seen, and "meet" one of the town's most famous residents -- Warren Buffet.

We then moved on and had one night in Boulder, Colorado and made the most of it. I had never been to Boulder before but I loved the pedestrian-friendly Pearl Street. The weather was perfect for dining on the terrace.

We chose the restaurant based on the name, obviously. We didn't even bother to look at the Yelp reviews -- how could we go anywhere else?

As it turned out, the restaurant building used to be the local undertakers. We didn't find this out until after dinner. I would still recommend Salt -- dinner was delicious.

On short notice, we managed to get an admission time slot to Rocky Mountain National Park while we were in the Boulder area.

We didn't have much time at the park, but we managed to do the scenic Trail Ridge Road drive, which took us up above the treeline into the tundra.

We enjoyed seeing some of the local wildlife, too, like this adorable little marmot.

After the park, we had a wonderful visit with some friends who we met when we were living aboard "Solstice". Like us, they are landlubbers now, with a beautiful ranch in some of the prettiest mountain country we've ever seen.

And, a bonus for me -- horses!

Our last night on the road was spent in the historic town of Silverton, Colorado.

The most popular thing to do in Silverton is to ride the famous Durango & Silverton narrow gauge train. Unfortunately we just didn't have time for a train ride on this visit. But we did stop by the museum so that I could pretend to ride the train at least.

We made time on the drive back to Phoenix to stop at the Mesa Verde National Park. Within the park are many well-preserved ancient Puebloan sites. The area has been inhabited since 7500 BC. The earliest dwellings were pit houses dug into the ground.

But the park is probably best known for the cliff dwellings built in the 12th century. I would have liked to tour inside one of the cliff dwellings but several were closed for restoration and in the end we just didn't have the time. It was time to get home to Phoenix for a brief rest before our next road trip!