Remember Us??

 Wow - we're coming up on almost a year since the last blog post we did!  A pandemic will do that though.  What a crazy year, right?  I guess let's get it out of the way that we had some big plans for travel in 2020 that included celebrating my in-laws' 50th anniversary in Colorado.  We were also originally planning to go to the New England area in late September so we could see some beautiful fall colors and so Acadia National Park could be our 300th park.  Well as we all know, COVID ruined all those plans.  On the bright side, we were able to go to Michigan to celebrate the milestone anniversary with Steve's parents.  The Michigan road trip gave us a sense of what traveling would be like, so we decided to still try to find somewhere to go that allowed us to do everything outside and be socially distant.  We think we have a winner with this trip.  The marquee park on this trip will be Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  This isn't a very heavily traveled park and it's after school has started, so crowds should be lighter anyway.  Unfortunately we won't be hitting our 300th park this year, but we are thankful we were able to figure out a way to safely get away.

So, let's get on with this trip!  Before our Michigan trip in August, we discovered two websites that have been so much fun:  www.atlasobscura.com and www.roadsideamerica.com.  These sites are fantastic!  They are basically an encyclopedia of all the weird and/or intriguing stuff that are worth a detour or a quick stop during a road trip.  We've been focusing on outdoor stuff for this trip so that we are safer than being indoors, but there are a lot of museums that are listed on these sites that sound awesome too.  We're keeping those in mind for future trips!

Today's trip started with a stop at James Buchanan's birthplace in Fort Loudon, PA.  A stone pyramid has since been built on the site as a monument for where his homestead was.  This is located in a state park that seemed really quiet and pretty.  We only went to the pyramid though because we had a long drive ahead of us today.

James Buchanan Pyramid

The next stop was to see the Optimus Prime sculpture that "guards" a business in Pennsylvania.  We grabbed the picture as we drove by, so it was a very quick "stop."

Optimus Prime

The third stop of the day was a good one for us to stretch our legs for a bit.  We stopped at Gardenview Horticultural Park in Ohio.  We spent about an hour walking through the beautiful garden.  I was surprised that there were still a good amount of blooming flowers.  I bet the place is stunning in the spring, so I would love to go back some day!

This was the size of a dinner plate!

We tried to see a giant soup can at the Campbell's factory in Ohio, but construction kept us from actually seeing it.  :-(  Instead, we were trying to hurry over to Mottville, MI to have enough daylight to see the longest camel-back bridge in Michigan.  We were glad we made it because it was pretty cool to see!

Beer in small glasses is much different during COVID times.  Basically we plan to stop at breweries along the way that are selling cans of their brews.  We then take them back to the hotel and drink the small glasses there.  We didn't stop at a brewery tonight, but we did find the best store ever:  Meijer!  So we stopped there to pick up some local beers and Oktoberfest beers.  Tonight's samples shown below.

Founders Imperial Brown & Founders Oktoberfest - both were ok.

Thanks again for following along!  Tomorrow's adventures are going to be so much fun, so stay tuned for another blog post tomorrow evening.