Day 3: Mansfield to Hocking Hills State Park, OH

With a free morning in our itinerary, we decided to check out the nearby Malabar Farm State Park’s trout pond. Despite the pond being stocked with trout just this morning and many of the old timers pulling out fish after fish, we had no luck catching anything except seaweed. They must not like our Ontario technique!

We did get to pet a cute pony on the farm though and that made the excursion totally worth it.

Our afternoon was spent exploring the Ohio State Reformatory, previously a prison and now a museum. It was very creepy and we agreed unanimously that it would have been a pretty awful place to live (even during the Great Depression). The Reformatory was the site were the movie the Shawshank Redemption was filmed. We did recognize several parts of the building and thoroughly enjoyed our Behind the Bars tour where we got to see the original hospital wing, experience solitary confinement and climb a guard tower.

Tonight we are sleeping at Hocking Hills State Park. It was a bit of an adventure driving here with Google taking us literally through a cemetery and on some very narrow, very windy back roads. But we arrived in one piece and Seamus BBQ’d us some well deserved supper.

Day 2: Dearborn, MI to Mansfield, OH

Our Alistair “alarm” woke us up at 5:45am this morning, sigh. Much later, we visited the birthplace of our trusty F150 truck at the Ford Rouge Factory. The factory tour was exceptional. The assembly line was in full-swing upon our arrival, with many workers installing everything from speakers to side mirrors to seat beats to tailgates. We even saw the two robots that install the windshields. It was fascinating and the two introductory videos (alongside the dancing robots!) were educational and really entertaining.

After lunch, we spent a few hours at the Ford Museum of Innovation. It was impressive and is in competition for one of the highest quality museums we have ever visited. We saw the  bus where Rosa Parks took a stand, the car in which Kennedy was shot, and one of only two Dymaxion houses invented by Buckminster Fuller, who also created the Epcot Centre in Disney World. We also saw the very first mustang convertible. Did you know that it was a store model that was purchased by a pilot from Newfoundland?

On our late afternoon drive into Ohio, we weathered three separate pouring rainstorms and are overnighting in the parking lot of an abandoned restaurant just outside of Mansfield.