With the Kentucky Horse Park in our rearview mirror, we headed into the Cincinnati area to finish off our Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour. We found a home at a small RV campground run by the Family Motor Coach Association called, appropriately enough, FMCA Campground. Go figger. It is a small campground with 15 FHU 50A sites and an additional 8 sites that are 30A electric only. This is an FMCA members only park and is very well maintained. Long, level, concrete back-in sites well spaced with lots of green grass between, the first two nights are free and only $20 per night for up to 5 additional nights. Woody (our K9 companion) liked the county park/lake that was adjacent to the campground with a mile and a half walking path circumnavigating the lake.

We hit the last 3 distilleries on the Craft Tour; Boone County Distillery, New Riff Distillery, and the Old Pogue Distillery. Yippee Kai-yay! Now we can settle down and detox/rehab! I have to say, after 23 distilleries, from the big boys to the smallest of mom-and-pop’s, my favorites tended to be the craft distillers. Of the Big 10, I liked the Woodford Reserve Double Barrel bourbon. Of the craft kids, I had a couple of favorites. From MB Roland Distillery, they produce a Dark Fired bourbon that is made with smoked corn in the mashbill, very smoky flavor. They also produce a moonshine called St. Elmo’s Fire that is very tasty. That is a cinnamon flavor with added cayenne pepper and it would light your cigar! Bluegrass Distillery produces a very good bourbon/rye mix. Hartfield & Co. make a white whiskey that is highly sippable. And Old Pogue produces a 100% Rye whiskey that is worth a taste.

Rain nailed us a couple of days here but we had enough clear days to check out downtown Cincinnati. We let Woody take us on a walkabout across the John A. Roebling Bridge, built in 1867, to the areas of the Reds and Bengals stadiums. And I took the opportunity to give the bus and Jeep baths before we headed out from Cincinnati.

We debated whether to head over to the ocean and hang out at Virginia Beach in a little warmer weather, but settled on heading north and maybe trying to visit Michigan. Next stop ended at Maumee State Park in Oregon, OH (the Toledo area). We stayed for 2 days and walked the trails of the park over to the beach areas of Lake Erie. Just to remind y’all, we rarely operate on reservation schedules, don’t care to be “pinned down” to schedules. So one day was pretty much spent researching stops in Michigan as we worked our way up the west coast toward Mackinac Island. We also wanted to throw in a visit to Gerald Ford’s Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids.

From the state park we drove into Marshall, MI and found Camp Turkeyville campground. This was a campground associated with Cornewell’s Turkeyville, a family run turkey farm that sports a restaurant for dinner-theater events, large gift shop, petting zoo for the kids, and various family activities geared toward the kids.  From here we did some drive/scouting into the towns of Marshall, Lansing, and Battle Creek. And, of course, a drive into Grand Rapids got us to Ford’s Presidential Museum. Another well done museum, the surprising information to me was that Ford was offered a spot on the offensive line as center for the Green Bay Packers football team. It was back in 1935, and he was offered a whopping $110 per game! Too bad we can’t roll back today’s players salaries to those days, maybe us poor folk could afford a game ticket or two…

So, north was where we were headed. Murphy’s Legislation reared it’s ugly head, again. As we tried to find destinations, we quickly realized we were in Michigan a bit too early in the year. It appears most RV establishments in this part of the world don’t open for business until May, I guess it gets a little cold here and they may encounter a touch of snowfall now and then. Not willing to wait it out, change of plans #7,936. We decided to head over toward Pennsylvania.

Cleveland just happened to be in our way enroute to PA, and that city just happens to be home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We found a hole in the wall 55+ trailer park that had a few RV spaces for transients like us passing through, Maywood Community in Chesterland just outside of Cleveland. The sites need work, but are level concrete with FHU’s and the $20/night fee worked for us, wanting a couple of days stopover while we visit Cleveland. We visited upon the Rock HOF and let Woody lead us around the downtown area including the Reds baseball stadium and the Cav’s basketball arena. We also got a cool lightning/thunder show while we were here at Maywood Community.

Jacks up, eastbound and down we are. Next stop, the great state of Pennsylvania. Until next post…