Yes, Toledo is in Ohio, and we stayed in Michigan, at the Monroe County/Toledo North KOA, which is north of Toledo over the state line, in Michigan. Got it? Good!
We had wanted to drop down into Ohio by way of Canada and Michigan, but as it turned out, we had an offer we couldn’t refuse. Don’t get too excited. Goodyear in Buffalo, NY offered to buy our extra, unused, space-taking, life-sucking, in-my-way spare tire back from us.
Border Patrol – Welcome Home!
The border corssing line was long but we made it through fine. An agent did come on board to inspect things, but he was incredibly impressed. (Which was good because it took us a long thirty seconds to untie the door that wouldn’t stay shut and had therefore been jimmy-rigged closed.) He peeked in the shower and the sound booth, very amused by the whole thing. The kids answered his questions (politely, whew!) and he seemed satisfied, so he went back to his station and waved us on. (Imagine me discreetly tying the door closed behind him.)
We made it!
After filling out some paperwork, we said adios to the tire that saved our butts (but had outworn its welcome).
Bye!
Toledo had been at the top of our list of places we wanted to visit. My dad is from Sylvania, and so almost his entire extended family lives there, including my last living grandparent, my grandmother!
When I was little, we would spend a week visiting in the summer or over Christmas, but since then the visits have always been much quicker trips. So this was really special to be able to spend an entire week living in town!
The KOA was big and had a huge fishing lake
We had several days to just hang out with my grandmother, Mimi. She loved seeing the kids!
Midweek, Ellie had a big recording job– her first national commercial! It was for CBS, for a show called “Courage in Sports”. The session time, however, coordinated perfectly with a huge downpour. Now Mis’Hap is very well insulated, and we rarely pick up any outside noise, even if we’re right by a highway. Ironically, heavy rain had been one of Billy’s nightmares leading up to this whole bus adventure. Because the sound booth is top notch, we had pretty much eliminated the rain as a concern. But this was literally torrential.
We considered moving, but looking at the radar map, we decided it was a pretty big distance to travel to fully escape it. So, we problem solved. We’re getting good at that these days 😉
You do what you gotta do
Totally normal
What you see here is a mattress pad (it wasn’t working for us anyway) on top of where the booth is on the inside, being held down by a few large boards.
It did the trick! The session was a success. Perfectly silent, Ellie did great, and nobody washed away.
Like a pro
The sun finally came back out and we were able to resume life as normal! (Did you like that? I made it sound like living on a bus and traveling around the country was normal! Gotcha!)
