Geneva State Park, OH

 Geneva, OH • Sep 30-Oct 2, 2018

I’ve always wanted to see The Great Lakes.  This campsite was bike riding distance to Lake Erie. Thinking back on childhood memories I remember reasoning that my parents had five children, there are five Great Lakes (maiden name is Lakes), and I’m Lake Superior!!  Goofy I know, but I wasn’t the only Lakes full of herself, my sister Karen’s mantra was ‘I’m GREAT, you’re not!’.

Lake Erie definitely looked like an ocean!

There were great biking paths mostly along the shore.  My kind of biking!

Dave found one of those ‘find it, post it, place somewhere else’ rock on Lake Erie Beach.  We’ll place it on a hiking path somewhere is Niagara Falls.

Amazingly cute for a ‘found’ rock!!  We also found another one, but left it in place.

We checked Trip Advisor to see what else there was to do in the area besides hiking and biking.  (I know, lots of water, but I’m NOT kayaking out there!). We came up with the James A. Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor Ohio.

This is actually the backside of the home.  The front only had about 5′ of lawn before the busy street and would have been impossible to take a picture.

This ornate carved oak table in the entryway caught my attention.

There was wallpaper everywhere.  Even on the ceilings in the bedrooms.  Beautiful stained glass was throughout the house.

This stained glass photo of Garfield was in his mother’s room, who lived with them.  She had several pictures on every wall of him.

His legacy library on the third floor that his wife had built after he died of a gunshot.

The many bedrooms and the entire house was stunning.  It feels good to get a little history under our belts on a president I knew nothing about until this tour.  The National Park System really has preserved some fabulous buildings and parks that we take full advantage of!

Since Dave suggested we go visit Garfield’s home it gave me the opportunity to visit my first L.L. Bean store.  I was real excited because they are not in our area and I order most of my camping clothes from them (but only when I receive the % off discounts by email!).  I was very disappointed.  Absolutely nothing was on sale and there is so much more on-line!  Also, I was planning on ordering the new Apple Watch series four when I got home.  Mine is the series one and the four can do so much more.  An apple store is two hours from our house in MS.  Lo and behold, Mentor Ohio had one!  It was a great day… Garfield’s home, L.L. Bean, and Apple Store and coming back to the camper with a new Apple Watch!