Day Seven - Sandusky, Ohio

I’d like to say that getting a decent night’s sleep made all of the difference when we got up this morning, but that would just be lying. Waking up early sucked, but what did make it better was having other (happy) early birds in the house, and toast and a banana waiting for us for breakfast. :) We got out of the house a few minutes late, but with a can of peach jam so it was worth it. :) Cousin Jim had also picked up a few things for my grandpa John since they were supposed to visit this summer.

Shortly after we left Bona’s, we crossed into Illinois. Then it was on to Indiana and up to Michigan. As always, the sunrise was beautiful.

 We also hit our first toll road (something that, fortunately, doesn't really exist on the west coast).

 And we found this police car with an awesome (ghetto) light. We saw a couple more like this later too...

Michigan is probably my second favorite place that we have visited so far, scenery-wise. My favorite was western Wyoming, but the trees that lined the interstate were just gorgeous, especially with all of the fall colors.

We had started seeing signs for Cracker Barrel, a store / restaurant that I had heard of but never been to. Something else that doesn’t exist on the west coast. I believe it originated in Tennessee and is an country store attached to a restaurant. The store sold home décor items, shirts and sweatshirts for a Michigan team, local foods and just about anything else you could think of. For lunch I had apple French toast with bacon and eggs (they serve breakfast all day!). It was wonderful. The topping on the toast tasted just like apple pie. Jess had the chicken salad, which looked pretty good. We’ll have to stop at another one when we’re farther south.

Right about this time, we crossed into Eastern time, costing us another hour and putting us three hours ahead of everyone back home.

 

Our next stop (and the reason today’s drive was 11 plus hours) was in Flint, Michigan. When my mom was a kid my grandparents lived in a house on Miller Road. Fortunately GPS took us right to the doorstep of the house. It was still standing, but looked like it needed some work done. We knocked on the front door, but no-one seemed to be home. In our infinite nosiness we noticed that there were home depot bags and it looked like whoever lived there was working on fixing up the house.

We were back on the road by 4:30 and reached the Ohio line shortly before 7:00, making a total of 5 states that we were in today.

And of course, the day ended in a brilliant sunset, probably one of the best thus far. :)

We reached the campground in Sandusky, Ohio (at the base of Lake Erie I believe) around 7:45, making our daily total around 11 hours of drive time. We had enough time to set up the tent and use the rec room to charge our laptops before it closed. We’re about to go in search of dinner, and then looking forward to a long night of sleep and a late morning tomorrow.