Friday 21 June
Our accommodation at Erie last night put us close to the border, so we were soon into Ohio this morning. Our main goal in this state was to catch up with Nathan Lindsay, who is over here on a work secondment for twelve months. We had left a message for him to let him know we were in the area today, but I thought his “area” was Ohio State University Golf Course. We were heading there when he rang us from his place of employment at Kirtland Country Club, NE of the state and not far from where we crossed the border into Ohio!
By that stage we had stopped for lunch at a little town called Lodi. The kids were not impressed because we stopped at more factory outlets, but Ross needed a break from driving…and saw a Levi’s store there from the highway 😉
After a short shopping trip, we headed back to Kirtland to catch up with Nathan. He is doing great. We had a look around at the Country Club where he works, and spoke to his supervisor to make sure it was ok to interrupt his workday. The older boys especially, who see Nath mainly at sporting games, were really impressed with what he has achieved, and are keen to consider some international experience in their future work. Thankyou Nathan for the inspiration!
We decided to give Cleveland a miss as it was a large city and continued on to Indiana. I had nominated Detriot as another city to visit from here, but we are just racing against the clock every day – my idea of a “holiday” is wearing everyone out as usual!
We did stop late afternoon in the town of Berlin, which is the centre of Amish population in Ohio. The kids enjoyed sharing the roads with horse and buggies, and it was amazing to see so many Amish people looking quite stereotypical in their dress, headwear, and beards without moustaches. They all looked so happy too, and calm travelling around in their buggies. Quite a contrast to somewhere like NYC! After explaining the little we know of their culture to the kids, and telling them the Amish do not use a lot of technology, we visited some of the town’s shops and found you could “like” one of them on Facebook!! We window shopped, and their prices were very reasonable, but the items I would have liked to buy were just too difficult to get home!
Our journey continued then to a place called Buckeye Lake where I had identified a good RV park. For the first time this trip we found there was no vacancy as the International Bureau of Electrical Workers had booked the place out for a week. There was a mobile home park down the road with a few RV sites, but we didn’t feel entirely comfortable there so decided to drive on.
The next RV park was not for another 110 miles and Ross had by then had quite enough of driving, so we hatched a plan to get a cheap motel room just off the highway to allow Ross to rest and provide us with showers and electricity. Well….you get what you pay for… A Motel 6 offered rooms from $39.99 per night which is on par or less than some RV parks, so at 9.30pm it sounded fine. Until we saw the clientele… We were able to park the RV in the car park right near the room, so Ross, Tim and Sam slept in the RV while the rest of the kids and I squashed into the motel room’s double beds. No free wifi, so therefore no blog post, but a hot shower this morning was welcome!