We’re home now! We’ve been home for more than a week, in fact. Dave had to go back to work two days after we got back, so things have been hectic. We usually try to leave ourselves more of a cushion before things start back up, but that didn’t happen this year since we had to push the beginning of the trip back.
So I’m going to go through the last part of our trip today, and then I’ll start over from the beginning doing all the campground reviews and more detailed posts about places.
We took our leave of New England and headed westward, starting off with a few stops in New York. Milo wanted to tour the conservatory at Bard College, so we stayed at a campground called Brook-n-Wood nearby and spent a rainy day checking out the college and this cool outdoor sculpture nearby called Opus 40:
Then more west to the Finger Lakes, where we stayed at Sned Acres Campground and enjoyed some more rainy days and did not so much enjoy one extremely stormy night. We went to the fabulous Watkins Glen State Park, where I suspect the recent torrential rains made our experience a good bit waterier than the average visit. We couldn’t finish the gorge trail, in fact, because the last bit of it was closed because of flooding.
The next day we headed for the little town of Seneca Falls, where we wandered around downtown and saw the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum (word is Bedford Falls in the movie was based on Seneca Falls) and the Women’s Rights National Historical Park:
And then more west to Niagara Falls. At this point we joined up with our planned itinerary from 2020–the trip we cancelled–at least more or less. We stayed at 4 Mile Creek State Park, about 20 minutes outside of Niagara Falls, and had a very big site and views of Lake Ontario:
We spent a lot of time at Niagara Falls, including some touristy stuff like the Maid of the Mist:
Canada taunted us by being RIGHT THERE, with its relatively upscale tourist traps, yet totally inaccessible to us:
Then a stop near Cleveland for another college tour, Baldwin-Wallace this time. We didn’t see nearly as many colleges on this trip as on the one before Ari’s senior year, since Milo’s only interested in music schools. Not nearly as many choices! Anyway, we all liked Baldwin-Wallace. We planned to go into Cuyahoga Valley National Park for a hike, but it was really hot and everyone was feeling a bit weary after a few action packed Niagara Falls days, so we hung out at the campground instead and decided we’d need to do the Cleveland area justice another time. Milo’s applying to Baldwin Wallace and nearby Oberlin, so there’s a decent chance we’ll have a good excuse to hang out there soon.
After this we went a bit off script. We had plans to spend a couple of days in Mackinaw City/Mackinac Island–we still had ferry tickets from the cancelled trip to use–but this would have added 600 miles of driving, and we were all getting that sort of worn down feeling that comes near the end of a long trip. Plus Fergus the anxious terrier was getting more and more reluctant to get in the van on driving days. So we decided to skip Mackinaw and stay in the Detroit area longer. A whole week as it turned out, which meant it was tied with Cape Cod for longest stop on the trip. That’s not exactly how we would have planned it, but we found plenty of things to do.
For one thing, we had a membership to the Henry Ford museum (again, because of the trip that got cancelled last summer), so we went there four separate times. It was pretty cool.
We also went to the super impressive Detroit Institute of the Arts:
And spent a day at Belle Isle, a big public park in Detroit with tons to do (an aquarium, conservatory, Great Lakes museum, nature center, lighthouse, etc)
Somewhere in there we went to Ann Arbor and to, I believe, every restaurant in Ypsilanti as well, but the pictures are getting out of control here, so I’ll move on and get back to those things later on.
Our final big stop (i.e. I’m not counting a quick overnight on the last stretch) was Cincinnati. We stayed for three nights at the FMCA campground just outside of the city. Members can stay for free two nights a month, with extra nights costing $30 each, so if you use that benefit it will pretty much justify the cost of a membership.
Our primary Cincinnati objective was meeting Fiona the hippo at the zoo. We did this, but I didn’t get a very good picture. It was the most crowded zoo I’d ever been to, and Fiona was very popular:
We packed a lot of other stuff into our 2 days in Cincinnati, too, like the William Howard Taft house, the history and science museums at the Museum Center, and the sign museum:
And then home! We were all glad to get home, but at the same time I’m already busily planning NEXT summer’s trip. We likely won’t be able to do a ton of RV travel before next summer. We do have a week on Jekyll Island planned, and we may go somewhere New Year’s week. But weekend trips are just about impossible this year with kid activities. But that’s why I jealously guard our summers and plan long trips then!
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