A bit of family history and thoughts on the campgrounds so far

We have solved the “camera to computer" situation so you will now find a few photos with all the previous blog entries.

July 2, 2012

We write tonight from our very lovely campsite in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Our trip today (370 miles) took us from suburban Cleveland to Crawfordsville, via Mansfield, OH where we visited (and took a ride on) a beautiful carrousel built in 1991 to be an exact copy of the great wooden carrousels of the early 1900s. 

 

 After lunch we continued our journey stopping for an hour in the town of Sidney, OH where my great-grandfather, Rev. Thomas Robert Hazzard, became the first rector of St. Mark’s parish upon his ordination from Kenyon College. He had one parishioner and no physical church. In 1900-01 Rev. Hazzard not only worked at growing his congregation but he also designed and built St. Mark’s Church doing much of the work himself and guiding the other masons and woodworkers. We were greeted today by the Senior Warden, and two other members of the current congregation, one of whom had given me many documents and photos from the church archives when I was writing the family history a year ago. They gave us a complete tour and treated me like a visiting dignitary. It was a moving experience and quite remarkable that the little church is still in use 110 years after it was built.

He is one final comment for today before I turn the narration over to Licia.  We are now at the extreme Western side of the Eastern time zone. As we pulled into our RV site at 7:45 this evening the sun was still high in the sky and dusk didn’t arrive until almost 9:30 PM.  Tomorrow we will cross into Central time. Now it is Licia’s turn.

 

 

Hi all!  Pete and I are meeting an eclectic group of Americans in our RV campgrounds.  In Niagara Falls an experienced RVer, smoking constantly, came over to be Pete’s friend while he was setting up.  He liked the size of our RV.  We found out that he had downsized from a large rig to a small pickup truck camper but his wife wasn’t happy at all!  The whole time we had to keep the windows shut to keep out the smoke.

At the American Wilderness campground in Grafton, Ohio we found ourselves in a destination campground.  Most of the sites were rented for the season and it was like a summer camp experience.  Golf carts were the preferred mode of transportation within the grounds for adults and kids alike.  We saw more tattoos and very large people than any other place so far.  The teacher in me would have loved to suggest that walking is healthy but I wisely decided this was not the place.  We did ride out the thunder storm while watching some of the “permanent “  add-on’s blow over.

Tonight’s site is all on the road travelers much like ourselves.  It is one of the more attractive campgrounds with Rose of Sharon bushes in full bloom.  We are having a great time!