State College to Cleveland

We woke up to rain which happened to get pretty heavy just as we were walking to breakfast. Brunch buffet back at The Corner Room since they were so good to us last night. While we were at breakfast it started raining even harder. Several people in the restaurant,  including me, simultaneously received an alert on their phone for a flash flood warning which had everyone looking at each other....pretty funny. After breakfast we did a little shopping on College St before walking back to the car to drive around campus. We stopped by Thompson Hall (my fav), several other builings and the Nittany Lion Statue before the rain finally let up. We drove around a bit more before stopping at Beaver Stadium which is right next to the baseball and basketball facilities. We did a walk around Beaver Stadium and part of the baseball stadium. They were getting ready for a game that night at the baseball stadium. Apparently, the baseball field (Medlar Field) is shared with the minor league State College Spikes. Beaver Stadium has a bunch of signs around it talking about why Penn St football is "The Greatest Show in College Football". Hmmmm.... ;-) Beaver Stadium also houses the Penn St Sports Museum which was worth a walk through. They have a ton of memorobilia, including bowl trophies, their one Heisman Trophy, an old bench from an earlier incarnation of Beaver Stadium, and footballs from games forever ago. The spot just to the right of the entrance to the museum is where the infamous Joe Paterno statue used to stand until the Jerry Sandusky fiasco. Every few hours they take people up to the club level for a look at the field...for free! We took advantage since we only had to wait 15 min for the next "tour". Overall, we really loved Penn St and State College. It definitely had that small college town feel. Just about everyone we saw was wearing something with a Penn St logo. The people were over the top nice. By 3:30, we were back on the road for Cleveland. We had rain most of the way including a torrential downpour near the Pennsylvania/Ohio border. Fortunately,  by the time we got to Cleveland around 7:30, it was mostly sunny. We checked into the hotel (Doubletree Cleveland Lakeside) and went to the Warehouse district for dinner. We ended up eating and having a beer in the outside seating area at Bar Louie. We got back to the hotel around 9:45, and got the kids in the pool for a swim before calling it a day.

Publishing extra Penn St photos for my college football junkie friends...you know who you are!