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.