Day 3 - On the Road Again

We were a little bit sad to leave Ohio this morning. We had a great time in Cuyahoga Valley National Park and wish that we had more time to explore. The area around the KOA was quite nice, with many cute little towns. In the future, we'd like to plan an extended visit. But, alas, the open road calls!

 We saw the RV Hall of Fame and Museum from the highway. We're planning on stopping there when we stay in Indiana on our return trip through. We were all excited when we pulled into a rest area for a lunch break - there were nice parking spots just for RV's and shaded picnic tables. Then, we noticed a sign saying it was permit parking only - you had to pay $10 to park there because there were electric hook-ups. Sadly, we proceeded to the truck parking area and ate our lunch in the sweltering camper. It was yummy though - cold sesame noodle salad with leftover steak from last night's dinner. The asphalt in the parking lot was so hot that we had to park all the way at the edge of the lot so Bernie wouldn't burn his delicate little paws to get to the grass.

Bob wanted me to share his view of the entire trip thus far :-)

It was a pretty drive, but it got monotonous after awhile. I didn't realize that the folks in Indiana and Illinois produced quite so much corn. The kids really did wish that we could get out and play in the enormous irrigation sprinklers that most of the farms were using.

As far as the eye can see. In all directions. For eight hours.

All in all, it was an uneventful drive, which is a good thing.

Bernie is happy that Gavin doesn't have to be in a booster seat anymore. Now he's free to snuggle right up close.

After a little over 400 miles, we landed at the Jellystone Chicago Campground. It is definitely kid-oriented. I'll tell you more about the campground in my next post. There was a little confusion when we arrived and we ended up moving from our original sites so that we had 50-amp service and could run our air conditioners (essential since it was over 100 degrees when we arrived.) Unfortunately, it takes a long time to cool the campers down after being closed up all day, so Mom and I took the kids to the pool right away. Don and Bob joined us shortly thereafter. It was a nice, big pool, but the water was probably almost 90 degrees, so not quite refreshing. Better than nothing, though! The kids had a really good time splashing around and Gabriella made a little friend (of course!) named Carly. When I had decided I'd had enough and got out of the pool, the little girl said, "Get back in here!" and chased me down :-) She really wanted Gabriella to stay and keep "helping" her jump off the steps into the shallow end of the pool. Carly's mom gave us some advice on where to go to stock up on any supplies we might need.

We had a quick hot dog dinner, then Don and Bob took a trip to Walmart to buy more water (the five of us went through a case in less than three days,) and some fans to keep the cool air circulating in the camper. We've discovered that our main a/c unit is not very efficient and really can't keep up with this immense heat :-( Many of you know how well I do with heat and humidity, so this is not good news, but we'll figure out a way to deal with it. Once Don got back and aimed a fan at our bed, I think that I was asleep within thirty seconds. This vacation stuff is hard work!