Vacation 2023

It’s been some time since my last update, and I have a lot to share. I suppose I’ll start with our vacation. We took our camper up to Thompson, Ohio — located in Geauga County between Cleveland and Erie, Pennsylvania. We stayed at the Thompson/Grand River Valley KOA Holiday. We usually like to stay at state parks, but they book quickly for July 4.

This was a nice campground, though we had some issues when we checked in. Specifically, they gave the site we reserved to someone else and assigned us to a less expensive site. But we ended up working things out with them, getting a pull-through site for our first night and then moving to a back-in site comparable to the one we booked on the following morning.

Getting camp set up that first day was difficult. We were dealing with scattered showers that kept us inside our vehicles for quite some time before we were finally able to get the camper level and hooked up.

Anyway, we stayed there for almost 2 weeks. We arrived Monday, June 26, and stayed until Friday, July 7. We celebrated my husband’s 50th birthday while we were there.

Some highlights:

We found a relatively empty park on July 4 near our campground — Thompson Ledges. It was a quiet and peaceful retreat from the holiday crowds.

A day later, my aunt (who lives nearby) picked me up at the campground so we could visit Holden Arboretum. This was an Ohio Bucket List item, so I was happy to finally check it off! Loved it there. Amid the gardens were several large Lego sculptures.

On our last full day, Thursday, July 6, we went to Lake Erie Bluffs to take Blitz to the dog beach there. Afterward we stopped at Checkers Drive-In in Perry, a little mom-and-pop burger stand that had picnic tables outside. The burgers especially were really good — they tasted more like burgers off the backyard grill than fast food burgers.

We checked out early on Friday, since it was a 3-hour drive back to Columbus. We had an appointment on Friday afternoon to get my military ID renewed, and we were expecting our lawn mower to be delivered — it had been at the shop undergoing repairs while we were gone.

This extended trip was a test to see how well we can do on a camping trip out to Yellowstone (date TBD). Overall, I think we can manage. Though our camper does start to feel a bit tiny after a week or so.