July 2025: The Beginning of a Three Hour Month Tour

July was the beginning of a new type of adventure.

I’d accepted a job doing light housekeeping and cooking for an older lady who spends her summers on Kelleys Island.

(For those of you who may not know, Kelleys is a small Ohio island in Lake Erie, not far from the Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky.)

A View of Cedar Point from Kelleys Island

Up until this point I had spoken on the phone with Molly, met her briefly in person, and texted back and forth a little over the course of June.

So, although I had a pretty good feeling about the whole arrangement, I didn’t know for sure how things would go.

I figured, “Well, if things aren’t great I only have to do this for three months and can just hit the road again after.”

Why, yes. This is foreshadowing!

It was paid work, with free room and board, and I was hopeful it would be an enjoyable time.

After all, it’s not every day that one gets a chance to live on an island.

The Walking Part

One of the first days there I took a walk to start to get the lay of the land.

The East and West sides of the island are split by a road that runs up the middle called Division Street.

This is where the “town center” is located.

It’s got a handful of restaurants, a local market, some tourist shops, and mini golf for the ~250,000 people that visit each summer.

I got a good chuckle out of this Flower Gargoyle that was camped out very prominently not too far North past the tourist stuff up Division Street:

And, in keeping with the general opening of these posts so as not to disappoint you all with a lack of funny trees, across from him was this one with a strange knot that looked kinda like a massive mushroom:

I was not particularly looking for gargoyles or unusual trees, ‘though.

I was on a quest for a new library card.

And the library on Kelleys Island did not disappoint.

Aside from having a helpful staff that was able to provide a card in short order, this little library has an impressive book collection.

I was especially pleased to see all of the YA books they’d curated.

Their collection looked like it could have been straight out of 2002, and the fact that such a library still exists delighted me to no end.

A sample of the YA book options, including The Chronicles of Narnia and a healthy supply of

Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Holiday Happenings

A few days later was the 4th of July.

Molly’s family came into town, bringing a lot of little kiddos to join us.

The morning of, we hopped in golf carts and joined the parade downtown.

It was a lovely day with heaps of good food. 🍔

That evening we headed over to the West side to see fireworks over the lake.

On the way back we talked about math and how quickly the kiddos could do multiplication.

I quizzed them.

They could, indeed, math quite quickly.

In summary, it was a very good 4th of July.

Softball & Other Island Observations

One of the other days Molly’s family was up, we went to a softball game.

It was the Kelleys Island Green Devils versus the Mennonites.

The Mennonites absolutely smoked the Green Devils.

It was a lot of fun to watch.

And neat how many people were out to see the game.

In many ways, it feels like Kelleys Island is about 30 years behind the times, but in a really good way.

People still get out and do things.

It’s quite refreshing.

When not helping Molly out, I took a lot more walks.

Here are some of the things I thought worth sharing:

First, is Woodford Road, where it is wonderfully green in the Summer.

This is what an evening at the beach looks like when the wind is relatively calm and there are only a few rolling waves from the boats going back and forth.

On a completely unrelated note, Molly has a couple of cats.

One day I got a picture of her kitty Shasta, who has remarkably blue eyes:

I’ve been taking pictures of people’s pets for over a decade now, and this is one of my favorites I’ve ever managed to capture.

(Usually cats have this funny way of moving exactly once you’ve got the perfect frame in focus but haven’t yet taken the picture.)

Also unrelated but worth sharing, one morning we had pie and ice cream for breakfast in front of the lake.

We live a charmed life here.

A Rockin’ Ride

After Molly’s guests went home, her neighbor Peggy took us on a tour in her golfcart one evening.

This was my first time getting to see much of the island.

We went up to the North Point.

Although not pictured here, you can see Pelee Island, which is a part of Canada, from this area.

(It’s not impossible to get a photo of Pelee but I find that, while the view is great in person, the photos don’t quite ever do it justice.)

Then we drove up Titus Road. It is a magical kind of green in July.

This is the Grotto, which may be my favorite part of driving down Titus (although there are a lot of pretty views, so it’s hard to pick just one):

Here’s the road itself:

I hear it’s quite something to see in the Fall when the leaves are changing.

Finally, we wrapped up the evening watching the sun set at the beach.

It was a giant sun; the zoomed version hardly does it justice.

And you’ll have to take my word for it that, as with most sunset pictures, this one was even prettier in person.

A Brief Mention of Architecture

Another thing that’s neat about Kelleys Island is the architecture.

There are some very large old houses.

This one is a bed & breakfast:

The Waters Edge Retreat on East Lakeshore Drive

And here is another lakefront house worth showing:

I haven’t verified it, but I believe someone told me this was once a hotel and is now a private residence.

Island Observations, Part Next

It seemed that there was always something going on on weekends here.

Only two weekends after 4th of July was Island Fest, which included another parade.

This one took the cake for good parade candy.

The kid standing next to me had a pretty full grocery bag by the end.

The best float was a golf cart that some people had decorated to look like a pirate ship.

They were dressed as pirates, and threw chocolate and plastic coins.

I got such a kick out of it, I forgot to take a picture.

So, this one of the island fire truck will have to suffice:

Which is to say…with not much patience. I mean, c’mon, Ferris Bueller was on the roster!

And then glared at me, haha.

Nerd Stuff & Nourishment

It was around this time near the middle of the month that for the first time in my life I decided to buy a handful of video games on Steam for their Summer Sale.

Among some classics, like a few of the Elder Scrolls ones I’ve never finished playing through, I picked up a copy of the new Baulder’s Gate game.

Several of my family have been playing this, and I thought it would be cool to check out.

So, my dad and I started a campaign to play together about once every week or so.

I created a Bard/Rogue character named “Captain Jack Sparrow” and have been playing with the parsnip parsley parley primary purpose of doing things exactly as I think Jack Sparrow would.

I am still working on finding him a tri-cornered hat.

This has made for some hilarious moments where I made decisions that should have gone horribly awry but turned out in my favor after all.

(For those of you who play this (or D&D), I made sure to multiclass up to a 3rd-level Rogue so I could make him a Swashbuckler.)

As of the time I’m writing this (January 2026), I think we’re just about ready to head to Act 2 of the game.

So, going through it quite slowly, but enjoying it all the while.

The food on Kelleys Island is overall quite good.

The places people talk about the most for breakfasts are the Marina and the Captain’s Corner.

There’s a third option that I enjoyed a few times, too, which is the local coffee shop.

They carry bagels from The Cleveland Bagel Co., which I’d been introduced to by a sibling a couple years ago:

(If you’re ever here or in Cleveland where they make them fresh, I highly recommend the Rosemary Seasalt one.)

A Vacation from Vacationland

One day, we went on a little trip where we got many much mushroom pictures:

(These are only some of the highlights. We got a lot of mushroom pictures.)

Then it was back to Kelleys where my mom came to stay for a few days before going back home.

Roast & Wrap Up

One of the last days of this month we had our neighbors, Peggy and Pat, over for dinner.

This was the place setting before we all sat down to eat:

Pot roast and homemade bread with herbed butter. We grew fresh parsley, basil, etc., in a little herb garden on the back porch, which was great for spice options and garnishes all Summer.

Oh, and a fun little aside to wrap this one up:

Molly is a very good bridge player who loves to learn new things, so I introduced her to Magic the Gathering this month.

She enjoyed it quite a lot. 😄

It became a semi-regular thing for us to play Magic on Friday nights over the summer.

Photo of the Month

This one just made me smile. Thought you guys might get a kick out of it, too. 😊

July Stats

Animals Pet

I kinda lost count of the animals I pet around this time. It was probably at least 8, primarily the dogs people were walking around town.

Books Finished

I don’t think I actually finished any books this month. I read much of C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy this Summer, probably mostly this month.

I also read a bit of Master and Commander, which is quite a funny book that I’d like to finish at some point.

Library Cards Collected

1

Distance Traveled (Miles)

Unfortunately, my tracking device didn’t count any of my driving in July, so I do not have this data.

Miles Walked

My walking app has also stopped working, so…these stats may be more sporadic for the rest of this year. 😅

Song of the Month