June 8: Hiking at Delaware State Park

This week Dandrich and I went for a hike over at Delaware State Park. Even though it was hot, it was a great way to spend an afternoon. The best part is it lets you work out and exercise while doing something kind of different. It makes it seem more like an adventure than exercise!

If you stop at one of the little information stations you can get a map with all the trails marked on it which can be pretty helpful.  We took a trail that ran from the campground area to the marina. It seems like most of the trails at Delaware originate near the campground area.

At the marina there was another information station that also sold hot sandwiches so we got some hot dogs and onion rings to refuel for the return trip. The food there was better than I thought it would be. Near the marina there is also a frisbee-golf range that seemed pretty cool. The information/food stand also conveniently sells frisbees in case you don't have any with you.

Overall the trail was not too difficult. It was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. I will say it's probably a good idea to either wear jeans and long sleeves or soak yourself in bug spray first. We didn't do either and returned home covered in huge mosquito bites.

May 28: Columbus Asian Festival

Over Memorial Day weekend Columbus' Franklin Park Conservatory played host to the Asian Festival. I was quite excited to check out this festival as I was hoping to chow down on some traditional Asian food. In the end it was slightly disappointing.

First of all there were some positive aspects of the festival. Mainly they had a large performance stage presenting traditional dances and music etc. Before I get any further I suppose I should specify that the day we went was incredibly hot. Furthermore hundreds of people crowded into the little festival, making it seem even more hot. So I suppose this may account for most of negative impressions of the festival. For example these performances may have been interesting but the heat deterred us from watching for long.

As expected the festival included both a food court area as well as various stalls selling 'Asian stuff.' The biggest disappointment was that most of the food stalls were just your typical Americanized Asian food, the same stuff you can buy at Panda Express. We ate at a stand with Filipino food. The food was good but lacked the robust flavor of typical Asian foods. It was most likely watered down for American tastes.

The lines for all the food stalls were ridiculously long. What's more, after waiting in line for 20 - 30 minutes, when we placed our order at a different stand we found they were out of what we wanted. All in all, because of the extreme heat and ridiculous amount of people (especially teenagers) we did not stay long.

May 21: An Afternoon in Frankenmuth

Let me begin this by saying that we set out for Frankenmuth without much idea of what to expect other than a store that sold Christmas stuff all year round. Based on that description, I suppose you could say this trip exceeded expectations. But that makes it sound a lot better than it really is.

Here the city looks down right scenic. Don't be fooled.

Frankenmuth advertises itself as "Michigan's Little Bavaria." It's really just an over-exaggerated version of Columbus' German Village that was bought by Donald Trump and turned into a Disney-type theme park. The food is not so great, everything is over-priced, and each shop sells tie-dyed sweatshirts sporting the town name. However, if this does not deter you, than go for it.

Similar to Disney, statues of mice line the streets.

We arrived in the town early in the morning and walked around some the little shops on the main street of the city. Most of them looked cute from the outside but once you entered there was really nothing worth buying. And there was little variety. At one end of the main drag was a little shopping center set off from the street. These stores had a bit more diversity; most of these stores were specialty or niche stores, which made them more entertaining to browse through.

In the shopping center we had a strawberry-banana crepe at a little cafe. That was delicious. For lunch, we mistakenly thought it'd be a good idea to find some authentic German cuisine so we went to the Bavarian Inn instead of the slightly better rated (on Yelp at least) Zehnder's which apparently is famous for chicken. Bad choice for so many reasons. We should have turned around when the hostess stared at us like a deer in the headlights when we entered the building. But we stuck it out and had to pick from four different menus. I still could not tell you the difference between these except one seemed needlessly expensive.

The crepe was actually delicious but . . . .

The biggest sign you have failed at picking a good restaurant when traveling is when you see buses of group tourists piling into said establishment. Unfortunately, we had already committed and ordered food by this point so it was too late to leave. The food was very similar to Schmidt's (in Columbus) but more bland and way less delicious. I ordered the Sauerbraten and a side of noodles. The noodles were covered in crushed crackers and were really dry and gross. Although I am not a connoisseur of Germanic cuisine the sauerbraten was only so-so.

. . . . the sauerbraten and noodles, not so much.

To add insult to injury, a woman in a Bavarian costume serenaded the diners with her accordion music, stopping at every other table to pose for pictures with the guests. It was way too campy for my enjoyment. We did not stay very long afterwards as we decided to spend the rest of the evening at a nearby outlet mall instead. In conclusion, while not the worst place I've ever been, it's certainly far from the best.

May 1, 2011: Good News Everyone!

When I woke up this morning I did not except it to be an interesting day by any means. And for the most part it wasn't. I went to work, came home around 10:30 pm, hurried over to Sonic's next door with Dandrich to get dinner, and came home to watch some TV before going to bed.

However, around 9:30 when I checked my phone for text messages there was a notification from the Huffington Post announcing that the President would be addressing the nation later that night. I didn't have much time to think about as we were preoccupied closing the store, but I assumed it had something to do with the bombings in Libya. As I headed to my car I checked the front page of the Huffington Post to see what President Obama had said. There was no further mention of it on the HP at 10:30 ish so I forgot about it.

When Dandrich and I returned home, I turned on the television and begin flipping through the channels to see what was on. As I passed over  CNN the headline "Osama bin Laden is dead" caught my attention. I called Dandrich over and we turned to MSNBC to watch the President's speech.

Watching the celebration of many outside the White House, I turned to Dandrich and asked, "Do you think people are doing anything here in Columbus?"

"Probably on campus," he replied. So we hurriedly pulled on shoes and rain jackets and headed over to Ohio State campus. As turned down Woodruff Avenue, we saw students in shorts and T-shirts, some in swimming attire, but all with towels, running across the street toward the middle of campus. This is actually a very common sight at Ohio State, but usually only on the Thursday night before the Ohio State - Michigan game. On that night hundreds of students brave the freezing cold to jump into the tiny yet scenic Mirror Lake by the South Oval.

Figuring that all these students must be headed to the same place, we made our way toward Mirror Lake.  This is what we found when we got there:

I guess the only thing Buckeyes hate more than Michigan is terrorists.