Day Two: Ohio

After an emotionally charged morning, we finally left for Ohio early Friday afternoon. Much to Katie’s chagrin, we were headed to Cleveland, not Cincinnati (sorry, Katie). You may be wondering, why Cleveland? There’s a National Park near Cleveland - Cuyahoga Valley National Park, so naturally we had to make a pit stop and go hiking.

We hiked to Brandywine Falls, which was the focal point of a small town in the 1800s. The founders of the town set up shop near the falls to take advantage of the water power. On the hike to the falls there’s even the remnants of an old sawmill. The hike was about five miles and change in total. After an obligatory stop in the visitors’ center, we were off to Indiana!

Some potentially interesting backstory: After we got married, Ian and I decided that we wanted to visit all 63 national parks. Typically when people set out on this goal, they get these little passports that they get stamped at each park they visit. However, we decided for whatever reason that we were not going to do that and instead created our own system for documenting our trips to the parks. Ian has an elaborate sticker system where he buys a zillion stickers from every park. I opted for a simpler option, postcards. We’re not 100% sure how we’re going to officially display anything, but every park we go to we have to pick up stickers and a postcard (or two if we can’t decide which one we like best).

Anyway, the drive to Indiana was largely uneventful. Shoutout to the Ohio Turnpike for being so well maintained. Our hotel was kind of dumpy and littered with cigarettes, and we got Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner because it was right next to our hotel and we could walk to pick it up. It was busy in there! Kudos to that random Longhorn Steakhouse in Portage, Indiana for apparently doing such great business.

Indiana Dunes National Park is on the docket for tomorrow!