Thursday, Sept 15
Driving from our site where we stayed last night in Sandusky, Ohio to our next campground outside Elkhart Indiana, was supposed to be 3.5 hours driving time. Due to a number of detours and distractions spent most of the day driving and stopping. We don’t have Menards in the Northeast but I had heard of them and wanted to visit one of their stores. There was one in Sandusky. What a great store. Really clean and quite the large variety of product. I wanted another 5 gallon Flame King propane tank (difficult to find) and they stocked them….so I now have a back up.
On a teardrop technical note….. we left Monday and my 100 Ah lithium battery was fully charged. There’s 2 —100 watt solar panels on the teardrop’s roof. I’ve not plugged into shore power once yet. It’s Thursday evening and the Victron monitor is showing 97% charge. Our Dometic fridge has been running 24/7, the fan is used for at least 9 hours a day, we use some lights for a couple of hours…. And we charge our phones and laptops. The site we’re at now has a shore power hook up and I may plug in tomorrow just to top off the battery but all in all….pretty happy with the solar panel set up and the way it’s kept our battery charged.
Traveling through Ohio the terrain got really flat when compared to the rolling up and down hills of upstate New York. We took Route 6 west pretty much all day. This is the local road as opposed to Interstate 90. Although we still were able to go 60 mph I think we got to see so much more than if we had taken the interstate. There are corn and soy bean fields for miles as far as can be seen. Also some dairy farms and pig farms. Farming seems to be the main commerce. There’s a mix of what looks like prosperous family farming compared with “agribusiness” farming. Many of the family farms looked as though maybe 50-75 years ago they thrived and are still doing well, but now a number of homesteads seem either abandoned or in need of repair. Lot’s of unused silos. A huge silo depot with access to train tracks totally quiet now, although I’m not sure now is harvest time. Saw many signs on the roadways honoring “the farmer”. “Each farmer feeds 106 people a day”. “Farming is Ohio’s biggest industry”. “Thank you Farmers!”. Some old barns had the family name and a year date (when it was established, I’m guessing) … one from 1850. Passed through some very small towns with maybe 15 houses next to each other along the roadway surrounded by corn fields in the background. Then again, through many more miles of corn fields.
I did like the gas prices. Much less than the east coast where I last paid $4.49 a gallon.
Around 4:30 pm we arrived at Potato Creek State Park in Indiana, some 3000+ acres of wooded wilderness. Great campground/state park. We went for a bike ride around the camping areas before dinner, which was canned chicken with a masala sauce over cous-cous along with cucumber salad. Picked up the cucumbers from a farmer with a small stand in Bryan Ohio.
Since Monday traveled almost 1100 miles. Really getting used to the trailer now. Towing it and living in it. Lot’s I’d change and tinker with. But that’s another story.
John
Safe travels, will be following and hope to get'r done someday. 
