How to Feel Really Alive on a Sunday Morning

Heard of the burning bush?  Here's a glowing tree.  Lake View Cemetery.

This past weekend, I went to Lake View Cemetery here in Cleveland for the first time. What took me so long? I don't know. I've signed a few permission slips for my kids to take field trips there, but I had never been.

I decided to take the time to indulge this past weekend.  The weather was picture perfect. The atmosphere, peaceful and abundant in beauty.  I went first on Saturday in the late afternoon - but the closing time was wrong on the website and I only had a half hour to visit. So Sunday morning I went back and spent another 2-1/2 hours wandering about - just me and my camera. And I still didn't see everything I wanted to. I hope to make a third trip sometime soon.

Lake View Cemetery was founded in 1869 and is known as Cleveland's outdoor museum and arboretum.  Consisting of 285 rolling acres, its borders touch the cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and East Cleveland.  It includes the gravesites of President James A. Garfield, John D. Rockefeller, Jeptha Wade, and Elliot Ness, those with well-known Cleveland names such as Blossom, Severance, Hanna, and Mather, and those of common working folk, too. You can see Lake Erie from some higher level areas, hence the name Lake View.  But this place is much, much more than famous names on headstones.  Art permeates the place in the statues, masonry, architecture, and horticulture.  Go soak it in.

To learn more about Lake View Cemetery, click here to go to its website. 

(You can click on the photos on this post for a bigger view.  To see more from my excursion, click here.)