Cleveland: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I'm really into checking out local museums whenever I go places. It helps kill some time when you have nothing else to do and they're always fun and informative. I mean, you'll at least learn one new thing from your trip if nothing else!

Visiting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a return trip there for us. I mostly wanted to see the new exhibit, the Grateful Dead and check out the HoF Inductee exhibit too. Last visit, the rotating exhibit was my fellow NJ-ite, Bruce Springsteen. Did you know that he collected hotel room keys from hotels he visited on his tours in the 1970's (they had them all displayed)? No? Well, now you do.

Here's Adam standing on the walkway that connects the parking garage (located at the Science Museum) with the RRHoF. Right down the road is the Cleveland Browns stadium. Down another street are the Cleveland Indians and Cavaliers stadiums. It's like all good things crammed into one place.

We happened to be visiting the HoF at a pretty cool time. They had about 60 Ohio artist-designed Fender guitars displayed outside the museum. The guitars will be auctioned off for charity in October.

I'll admit, there were a few that were my favorite, like this mosaic tiled one that I'm standing next to. So gorgeous. Look at the incredible painting detail on the flower child guitar to the left. I could totally see a 1960's artist having their guitar painted exactly the same.

There were some guitars that were sponsored by the sports teams in the city, so there were a few Cleveland-centric designs. I loved the accessories that some of the guitars had, like this one that has acrylic and copper leaves coming off the headstock.

You're not allowed to take photos anywhere inside the museum, except for the lobby area where the cars from U2's "Zoo TV" tour were hanging (you can also see where they had the HoF Inductee exhibit up top there). There were a couple of guitars inside, like this crazy Michael Jackson one, complete with sequined glove. Adam was not happy that I made him stand there to take a picture with it. I believe there was also an Alice Cooper guitar and a wicked cool light-up guitar that changed colors. Now that would be a great one to use as a nightlight. :)

As beautiful as the day was, that evening we had a crazy lightning storm. My mom and I were out shopping at Kohls and the power went out for a solid 10 minutes. We were about ready to leave when it finally came back on. Scary stuff. The lightning really kept up and when my mom and I got home, I ran outside to take some photos. I don't know if I've ever seen such an active lightning storm with no rain before!