A few miles after leaving Pymatuning Park we entered Ohio. We were going to stay at a free spot the next day – Cracker Barrel, or Pilot truck stop, but after Chris checked the weather and saw that it was going to be very hot we decided to splurge on a KOA for a couple nights. Since we needed to do laundry soon anyway, it worked out. The KOA Holiday in Wapakoneta was the right distance, so we booked there.
We chose a site and paid a little extra to have some privacy. Our site backed onto a soy bean field. The KOA is small, but offers all the usual amenities – pool (closed for the season), pavilion for games, store, laundry, dump station, and fenced pet areas as well as cabins. The facilities were a little dated but very clean. A large grassy area allowed us to exercise Cedar which was great as again there were no trails nearby. The nearby Interstate 75 was very busy but thankfully we were just far enough away. The I75 is a main corridor between Detroit, Toledo, Dayton, and Cincinnati with Columbus and Indianapolis to the East and West, so the truck traffic was non-stop.
The next day was hot as was predicted so we alternated between short bursts of playtime in the field, and sitting in the van with the AC running.
We stopped at St. Mary’s to take a walk in a town park and discovered a portion of the Erie Canal system with a walking path. Because we were no where near Lake Erie, I looked this up later and found this: The canal provided traders with access from the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 460 miles long, it was the longest canal ever built in North America.
