24 States in 27 Days - Day 9:

Oct. 18th, 2012, Thursday: Rain was still falling when we woke. For breakfast we had oatmeal with dried cranberries, fresh fruit and fun family stories. Brad needed to order business cards for a client, but once he’d finished that we packed things up to continue on our way east. We really enjoyed our visit in Michigan, and look forward to seeing my Aunt and Uncle in their new home. I started out driving that day, and Brad was navigator leaving Williamston and turning south to Ohio on hwy. 52. After stopping for gas, somehow we ended up in Jackson Michigan - west of hwy. 52. Navigation fail…! We had to wind our way through Jackson then go south on 127 which was a much busier highway. 

We switched drivers just before the Ohio border, and I mapped out a crazy zig zag route through Ohio, jumping from highway to highway, avoiding all freeways and cities. I had to write down the highway numbers on a cheat sheet to keep track since each turn was a new highway. We went from hwy. 127 to 20 to 66 to 2/34 to 6 to 108 to 281 to 199 to 18 to 224 to 61 to 603 to 96 to 60 to 3! 

Lots of cool towns to see like Napoleon, with amazing buildings & sign opportunities, past Fostoria - home of Fostoria glass, a stop to shoot a gold leaf sign in Plymouth, then in Ashland Ohio we pulled into a park for an early dinner. 

Napoleon Ohio

Below are photos from Ashland Ohio: 

From there we drove to a state park south of Loudon. 

Loving that autumn color! 

Finding it, we were blown away by the number of people and RV’s - it was like everyone in Ohio was camping there that night! After driving through and finding a few spots that might work for us we stopped at the camp store to see what they charged. The woman inside said everything was reserved for a big Halloween celebration this coming weekend. No wonder there were kids everywhere. She cheerily told us about a campground across the river that was more secluded and less commercial, so we headed there next. It was across a covered bridge on the Mohican river. Perfect! In the dark, we pulled into a vacant spot. We’d seen just a few other campers way down at the end of the road, but it was quiet where we settled, ending a truly satisfying day spent exploring the backroads of Ohio.