Where We Went

Cleveland Museum of Natural History. I think that the Smithsonian Natural History Museum has set the bar for Natural History museums, so when we were first planning our Cleveland trip, I wasn’t sure about visiting the museums. But we had a morning to fill up, and once I started looking around the area, it would work out.

The Cleveland museum is doing renovations right now, so half of the museum is closed. The new exhibits are set to open before the end of the year, so we wouldn’t get to see any of them. The tickets appeared to be discounted in price—$10 per ticket—and the museum had a main area, the Visitor Hall, that had free admission. We decided to buy tickets because the ticket also got us into the Wildlife Center, which was super cool.

The Visitor Hall featured:

• A dinosaur named “Happy” who was discovered by a Museum team in 1954 in Colorado; it’s the only known adult specimen of its kind that’s completely enough to display.
• Lucy, the partial skeleton that was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by a team of scientists led by a former Cleveland Museum curator. The skeleton was the oldest and most complete fossil ever found, with 40% of the skeleton unearthed.
• A Dunkleosteus skull, which was a giant fish that lived over 359 million years ago when Ohio was covered by a tropical sea. It’s nicknamed “Dunk.”
• Balto, who was the lead dog on the final left of the dogsled relay to deliver medicine to Nome, Alaska in 1925. He joined the Museum’s collection in 1933.
• A piece of moon rock on a long-term loan from NASA that was one of 69 samples retrieved during the Apollo 12 mission in 1969.

On the upper level, there was an exhibit dedicated to the Dunkleosteus. Fossils were first found in 1867, and by 1875, multiple large fish pieces were present in Ohio Shale. The bodies were made of cartilage, so they don’t exist anymore; only the skulls are found.

The Wildlife Center is outside and connected right to the museum. It was basically a tiny zoo, and it was set up so that you could walk through the center on raised walkways and get close to the exhibits. Many of the animals aren’t able to live in the wild, so they spend their time at the center either to live out their lives or act as animal ambassadors.

Cleveland Museum of Art. The museum was just a few minutes walk from the Natural History Museum and admission was free. Plus it had AC. We were amazed at how big it was inside and knew we wouldn’t be able to cover all of it.

Josh and I aren’t super cultured—so most of the time in art museums, we don’t know what we’re looking at, but we like to wander around.

Loganberry Books. This bookstore popped up a few times while I was searching for things to do in Cleveland on Instagram. Luckily, it was near the area of the museums, so it was a short drive and not far out of the way. It was so big! It just kept going and going. I only got one book—The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny—or else I was going to run out of room in my carry-on. I think they have a bookstore cat but I didn’t see it while we were there.

Cleveland Guardians/Kansas City Royals game. We lucked out again this year having the hometown baseball team playing in the city. Our tickets were $16 nosebleeds, but hey, it’s fine. Downtown was super busy, but there were cops directing traffic; we pre-paid for parking in a specific garage next to the stadium so we were able to go right in.

Gates opened at 5:30 p.m., and once we were inside, we went up to our seats, which included two escalators because we were on the very top level. Only about half of the vendor stands were open on the top level, but we were able to find food and local beers; we sat at a picnic table to eat. To our right was the bridge with the Guardians statues that the team is now named after.

I really liked Progressive Field—it’s just a shame they didn’t bring back Ten Cent Beer Night for the 50th anniversary on June 4. (You can read about that crazy night on Wikipedia.)

By the fourth inning, the Royals had a 5–0 lead, and we were worried it wouldn’t be a good game. It was also moving pretty quickly, but then the Guardians scored 3 runs in the bottom of the fourth and then scored five more runs in the bottom of the seventh, ultimately winning 8–5. We saw five home runs between both teams, and it turned out to be a pretty good game.

After the game was over, one of my fears came true: we couldn’t find the rental car in the parking garage. Josh tried pressing the lock button in an attempt to locate it, but the lock noise was super quiet, so that wasn’t helpful. We had gotten off on the wrong level and had to go up one more, then we found the car. It took us a little bit of time to get out of the garage, but cops were still directing traffic outside so that made getting out easier.

What We Ate + Drank

Breakfast: Grumpy’s Cafe. Grumpy’s Cafe is in the nearby neighborhood of Tremont, and it was such a cute place. We knew once we walked in that it was going to have good food; the walls were painted funky colors and had local artwork hanging up for sale. Plus mismatched mugs.

I got the Grumpy’s Special with eggs over easy, sausage, home fries, and wheat toast; Josh got the corned beef hash omelet with wheat toast.

Lunch: The Jolly Scholar. This was sort of a last-minute find before finalizing our schedule, and I found it on Google Maps by searching in the area around the museums for lunch restaurants. It’s a brewpub on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. How cool is that?!

To get there, we walked through part of campus, which was quiet since it’s summer time. We both got beers and got chicken bacon ranch quesadillas; the beer was good, and the food was fine, what we expected for a college restaurant. But it was still cool to go.

Dinner: Guardians game. Nothing wrong with ballpark food.

Other Notes

For some reason, I thought the Dunkleosteus sounded familiar, and come to find out, I found one of the skulls in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and donated it to the museum on the island. I played the game the other night and showed Josh: “Look, I found a dunk skull!!!”