Glacial erratics around Lake Erie

I grew up in the Cleveland Metropolitan area.  As a family we used to love to go hiking in the parks around the city.  The one thing I always seem to remember about those walks was looking for boulders to sit and rest while the rest of the family would catch up to my brother and me.  We liked to run and get away from them.  It did seem like there were a lot of them. Sometimes I would look at them and notice how different they looked from the rocks that were still in place. 
    I never thought much about them but then when I was in college I found out they were glacial erratics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_erratic    When I went home I decided to take some pictures of these rocks that have always caught my imagination. 

This first picture was taken in Forest Hills park.  They had just been pushed off the path and the trees grew around them.

 Next I took a walk around North Madison and the Lake Erie area.  This was one that is in the city park.  It definitely looked like a granite of some type.  I did use a penny for scale and it is sitting on the top below the tree stump. 

 More erratics in N. Madison park.  The playing field is in the background.

 Another one only this one was probably a limestone. 

 This one looked more like a gneiss.

 These were more angular, so I don't know if these were true erratics or if it had been moved there on purpose.  It does look like the Berea sandstone which was used as a building stone in the area.  If they are Berea sandstone it outcrops nearby and that maybe the reason its still so angular.

 Most of the boulders you see are small like these, and people use them to decorate their yards.

 I thought this was pretty the way they used it to outline the garden.

 This looked like a pegmatite of some sort.  It also looked like it had some striations on it from being dragged by the glaciers. 

 Some can be quite big and most people don't try to move them around a whole lot.

 I really liked this one.  It was banded iron ore.  I've seen rocks like this in upstate Michigan.  It blows me away when you think about how far this rock must have traveled to get to this location.  

 Then I went walking around Horseshoe lake Shaker Hts Ohio.  I always loved playing on these erratics that lined the street.

Here you can see they're one after another on both sides of the street.

 Most of the time you just happen upon them in the woods.  There was one that we used to use as our secret meeting place.  You had to know which one we were talking about to know where to go.  All of the big ones had special names but I don't remember the names now. 

 In some places they used them to make walls, like this one that is on Lee Rd with Beaumont school on the other side of it.

 This is part of the wall and you can see how different the boulders are.

 This is piece of granite that they put a memorial plate in.  We used think it was a grave and avoid this one.

 This is one where we used to meet at and eat our lunches on.  Its not too far from where the restrooms used to be. 

 Here's a closer look at it.  Its a limestone.  I see these and I think back to my childhood.  My best friend also became a geologist and another boy that lived a block away became one too.  The neighbors used to marvel that we would have 3 geologist from the neighborhood children.  But when you have rocks like these to play on it didn't surprise me at all.

  I just thought this was a pretty picture and am including it here.

 This used to be a home that was 3 doors down from my best friends house.  We spent many a day playing on those rocks.  We weren't suppose to but we would do it anyway. 

 This is a picture of the Chagrin river near Chagrin Falls.  Most of the rocks were from the area but every once in a while in the river you would see something that would catch your eye. 

 This is how the shore line of lake Erie looks.  Those cobbles and pebbles were something else to walk on. 

 Here's a close up of what it typically looks like.  I didn't have a penny with me for scale.  Most of it is pretty course stuff.

 I always preferred walking in the sandier area.  There is a footprint of mine on the right hand side middle. It's about 9 inches long.

As a child we loved to find the flat stones so we could skip them on the water.  I see a couple that would make good skipping stones.  The most I ever got a stone to skip was 15 times.  I've seen one that got about 30.  Makes me wonder how many skips other people have gotten.