19 March 2017 Strange Weekend

This strange weekend started the prior weekend. I had left a bag with work papers and two technical books in Pennsylvania. It wasn't a good thing, but we planned to be back this weekend so I could retrieve the material and bring it back to Ohio. Then came the drive to Pennsylvania and a stop in Meadville. Our faithful Subaru was clearly not well. We limped the Subaru back to Ohio. I was left with a single-purpose drive to Pennsylvania on Sunday to retrieve the papers.

As I drove through Corry, I noticed there were construction vehicles at the Corry Drive-In removing the old theatre. The theater was open and appeared to be popular when we first bought a home in Pennsylvania. After a number of years, the theater closed and became a church which was the next step to oblivion. It has been closed for a number of years and slowly sliding away. We don't do drive-ins so we don't really have any stake in another one leaving, but they are a fading piece of our past. Like malls, they were a place where people went and were forced to see there were all kinds of people in the world. Now we shop on-line at Amazon, watch movies on miniscule phone screens, and only allow our children to play under supervised conditions. I think we lose a little bit more each time places like the Corry Drive-In fade away.

I also at bit sad for the town of Corry. I'm sure someone believed tearing down the drive-in would pave the way for a future improvement. Instead, it set the stage for another overgrown, weed-filled plot of land at the edge of another small town.

The ticket booth and projector/concessions building would soon be gone.

I retrieved the papers and made the fastest round-trip ever to our home in Pennsylvania. We made a much-anticipated visit to a new Lake Metroparks location called Lake Erie Bluffs. I was excited for the chance to climb the new multi-story observation tower at the park. I was really disappointed to see the tower roped off from visitors due to high winds.

It didn't really matter since there was little to see on Lake Erie with a mist obscuring visibility.

We planned on a walk after the viewing tower. We made a longer walk and enjoyed a few birding surprises.

We also spotted the season's first colts foot in bloom.

By the time we had reached the far end of our walk the mist had broken allowing us to spot three mergansers on the lake.