Warning, this is a long post…but it is the last one for several months and covers several days!

We had a quiet morning at the campground on Saturday; Connor had a paper to write, so he focused on that for a few hours while we relaxed, took a walk, did some chores in the RV, etc. We were pretty amazed, walking through the campground, at how many people had massive Halloween displays at their campsites – so many inflatable pumpkins and ghosts, plus several full graveyards setup. Wow – talk about serious Halloween fans! We also noticed black walnuts everywhere – they are huge, and very noisy when you drive over them and crack them open.

For the afternoon, we headed into Cincinnati which is about an hour south of Oxford. Our first stop was the Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a really well-done museum that tells the story of slavery and the Underground Railroad. The movies there were put together very well to provide some history and personal stories of individual slaves. If you are ever in Cincinnati, I definitely recommend it!

From there, we took the free circulator bus to the “Over-the-Rhine” neighborhood, so named because of the large number of German immigrants who settled there, and the nearby river which reminded them of walking over the Rhine. We wandered past Music Hall which is a beautiful old building and through Washington Park where we spent a few minutes watching about 20 dogs at an off-leash park – they were having the best time chasing each other, sniffing new dogs, and playing. Such fun! I also spied what appeared to be a 25-story Kroger grocery store. Turns out, it’s their corporate headquarters. Darn, that would have been interesting to shop in!

We had a yummy dinner and headed back to Oxford, with a quick grocery store run on the way since Connor usually shops on Saturday afternoons and we kind of messed with his routine!

Towards the end of our day in Cincinnati, I received a neighborhood alert through our Ring security system. They send me anything related to Webster, so I usually don’t pay much attention. But this one caught my eye…fire reported in the 100 block of Redon Circle. We live in the 100 block of Redon Circle. Oh no! The alert didn’t have any other details, so the first thing I did was open the Ring app and look at our camera ‘live views’ to see if they looked smoky. Fortunately, they looked normal. Then I started searching other emergency service websites, and fairly quickly found the address of the fire, 199, which is the building next to ours and about 10 townhouses away. Phew. While I was concerned for our neighbors, I was REALLY relieved that it wasn’t our townhouse, or our next door neighbor’s townhouse, that was on fire. We learned later that it was a dryer fire, and when we got home, saw that there’s no exterior damage, apparently just lots of smoke and water damage inside.

The weather was absolutely perfect for a campfire, and we realized this trip how nice it is to have a campfire when it’s actually dark and a little bit chilly out – a bit different than during the summer when it doesn’t get dark until after 9pm and it’s still 80 degrees out!

On Sunday, we started out by visiting the two covered bridges in Oxford, one that’s modern and just outside Hueston Woods State Park, and another that was built in the late 1860s.

From there, we headed to Miami University and spent a couple of hours walking around campus. Last time we ‘toured’ there was in 2017 when Connor was a junior in high school and we visited so he could see if he liked Miami. Turned out he did and still does! It was really nice to see the beautiful campus again, and walk through Farmer School of Business where Connor spends most of his time. The business school building is absolutely amazing, from the grand piano in the commons, to the lecture halls, to the study rooms. I just love that this is where Connor spends so much of his time – oh, and the professors and education he’s getting are pretty impressive, too! As an aside, Farmer is named for the CEO of Cintas Corporation, a Miami alum who donated LOTS of money to get his name on the building/school!  Farmer is one of the top five public undergraduate business schools in the country.

Robert Frost once called Miami “the most beautiful campus that ever there was” and he’s right. It’s amazing. Even though it’s 200+ years old and has grown and changed over the years, the red brick buildings are all so consistent and they “match” each other so well. It’s a very photogenic campus!

There’s one section of campus that’s a little different – “Western Campus” – which was originally “Western College for Women” and merged with Miami in the 1970s. The buildings are distinctly different, but equally beautiful, and there’s lots of grass and trees. There’s some interesting history there, too. In 1964, 800 students volunteering for the Civil Rights Movement trained for “Freedom Summer” on Western Campus, and there’s a historical site there.

We had a delicious dinner at one of Oxford’s restaurants, with Connor and Emily, and then walked around “uptown” and had some ice cream. Sunday night football was Buffalo vs. Kansas City, and that was the final item on the agenda for our time in Oxford – so back to the RV to make sure our cell signal was strong enough to stream the game (Connor’s living room was plan B!) in time for 8:20 kickoff. And the Bills destroyed KC, so it was a fantastic ending to the weekend!

Monday morning, we packed up and headed to Dayton where we stopped at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. The place is absolutely massive, and far superior to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in DC (even when you include the Udvar-Hazy portion of Air & Space at Dulles airport). It’s the largest military aviation museum, with over 350 aircraft on display – almost three times as many as at Udvar-Hazy. There was no way we could possibly have seen everything in one visit, so we narrowed our time to the “Presidential Gallery” which was fabulous. We walked through the first “Air Force One” which served five presidents and is the plane that took JFK to Dallas and returned him, in his casket, to DC. Lyndon Johnson was sworn into office on that plane, as well.

“The Independence”, Harry Truman’s plane, was there, along with “Columbine” which was Eisenhower’s plane. “Sacred Cow” was the first plane purpose-built to fly the President, and it was used by FDR. It was custom outfitted with an elevator for his wheelchair, to take him up into the plane. It was interesting to see how the controls became more modern with each plane, and how navigation changed from sextants to radar and computers. The interiors of the planes and the communication systems were all fascinating to see, as well. At the entry to each plane was a narrow plexiglass ‘doorway’ – to indicate how narrow the interiors of the planes are and ensure that people could fit. Anyone even slightly larger than average or claustrophobic would have trouble getting through!

We walked through the research and development area and NASA displays and decided it was time to get back on the road. We plan to stop back when we return to Oxford next May for graduation – there’s an entire gallery dedicated to early flight which must be fascinating, especially since the Wright Brothers were from the Dayton area! There are also galleries for WWII and Korean War planes. Mark and I both have Air Force in our blood – his Dad served in the USAF during the Korean War, and my Dad was a mechanic in the British Royal Air Force – so this museum was definitely an interesting find!

On our drive between Columbus and Mansfield, we had a visitor in the RV. What appeared to be a stinkbug decided to hitch a ride with us, and those are especially problematic because you can’t just kill it or you will be living with the smell for a while….not that I would have been able to kill it, I’m not good with bugs. So, I turned a disposable plastic container upside down on top of it to trap it and put a deck of cards on top to make sure it didn’t move. We drove with it like this for about 30 minutes until the next rest area where Mark released it to its new home. Ugh. That could have been nasty. I did not take any pictures of our visitor, sorry!

As we continued our drive, we had another good find (like the museum, not the stinkbug)… I was looking online for a park along our route where we could stop and grill our dinner. Google maps helped me find Charles Mill Lake Park near Mansfield, OH. When we arrived, we found that they had an amazing campground, which made us think…hmmm, this might be a better place to stay tonight than the WalMart parking lot we were planning on. I checked online, and they allowed for ‘walk-ins’ without reservations (which many campgrounds do not). After we ate, we found the self-registration info (office was closed at this point) and took a picture of the map and site numbers for walk-ins. We drove around and eliminated a few sites because they weren’t very level and would have been challenging. After a few minutes, we chose site 526 and Mark got us positioned and leveled. We took a walk around the campground (well, this one campground area – there are two others in the park, total of 500 campsites – huge place!) and there are lots of seasonal campsites surrounded by lakes. This was the older campground section; the other campground area we drove through was clearly much newer, with concrete pads, full hookups, and more lake views. If we return, we’ll stay there! Anyway, we had a good night’s sleep and were happy to be plugged in ‘cause we needed AC and fan during the night – it was warm out! The WalMart parking lot would have required generator use for that, which of course means lots of noise. So overall, it was well worth the $38 to have electricity for the night…oh, and an amazing sunset view!

Tuesday morning we decided to detour our route slightly and continue our ‘presidential’ theme by visiting the William McKinley Museum/Presidential Library/National Memorial in Canton, OH. The museum is actually a combined local history and presidential museum, but they had a nice display of artifacts both big and small from McKinley’s time as our 25^th president, from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. Again, we learned quite a bit about his presidency and his life.

The memorial where he and his family are interred is beautifully done. It took just two years to build which is pretty amazing, but it appears they didn’t do the best job as there are large cracks in the walls because they didn’t allow for expansion joints. We made the 108-step climb to the top, and it looked like it’s a popular exercise spot for locals who were running up the steps.

We stopped for gas and bought a bag of ice…Mark learned in all of his research that it’s helpful to put a bag of ice down the toilet before you drive, so the ice cubes bang around in the tank and loosen anything that might be hanging around/stuck. The ice had several hours to do it’s job…and it was especially necessary since this is our last trip and we’ll be winterizing soon – which means tanks need to be completely clean and empty or we’ll end up with poop-sicles in February as Mark says.

Monday evening and Tuesday morning, the side-view camera on the RV started acting up – usually when you put on your directional, it shows a view of the side of the RV on the screen so you have better visibility. Well, it was cutting in and out and looking a lot like old black & white TVs when the antenna wasn’t working too well. Ugh. It did cooperate most of the time on Tuesday, but clearly there’s a loose connection somewhere and it will need to be fixed. But, during our trip home, we did discover that you can turn on the RV’s rear-view camera full-time and leave it on. We had never found this function before, and Mark purchased a separate camera for this purpose (since we’ll want to have a good view when we’re towing). Oh well, the one he bought has a clearer screen/better contrast, so it’s still very useful! And, about 3pm, we found something else that needs to be fixed. Driving along the NY Thruway, about two hours from home, we hear a loud noise and we’re both like “what was that?”. Mark pulled over and walked around the RV to find that the trim piece around the front driver’s side wheel well was gone. Missing. No sign of it. Apparently it managed to fall off the RV somehow. Mark walked along the shoulder for a little ways to see if he could spot it and salvage it, but no sign of it anywhere. Great. But at least it didn’t cause any other damage and we don’t believe it hit any other vehicles. And then, a few minutes later, the dash screen starts to fall off along with the housing and the knob that controls power and volume. We had the exact same issue on our first trip back in April, and you may recall that Mark had to use painters tape to secure it until it could be fixed. Well, now it has to be fixed again. Unbelievable. But, again, two hours from home, at the end of our trip…so much better than if it was the beginning of our trip. And, as the last trip of the season, the dealer can keep RoVer for several weeks if needed to fix everything properly.

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So, that’s it. Season One is over; I guess this was our season finale, but with no cliffhanger! We put about 8,000 miles on RoVer, made tons of memories, saw so many beautiful places, and had a wonderful time. Sure there have been some issues and hiccups, and it would be better if we hadn’t had those, but overall they’ve all happened at the least inconvenient times and we’ve stayed safe throughout our journeys. We’ll take RoVer in for repairs, an oil change, and her annual state inspection, and then get her winterized and stored away…but there will be regular visits to start the engine & generator and check on everything (make sure no critters have moved in!). We’re looking forward to early February when we will load her back up and head south. Living in the RV full-time for two months at seven different campgrounds will be a new experience for sure! See you then!