April 2025 in Michigan & Ohio

Visiting Curtis’ Parents in Michigan | Historic Sites in Southern Michigan | Two Dead Presidents in Ohio | April 2025

We spent Curtis’ second week “off” with his parents in Michigan. It was a colder week which kept us inside for the most part, but we kept busy with fun activities together. Curtis’ birthday fell during this week, making it the first birthday he’s spent with his family since high school. We also got to meet their new Paws for a Cause puppy that they’re training – a chocolate lab named Darby, who was just 10 weeks old. She was adorable, and completely enamored with Charlotte, but unfortunately Charlotte isn’t fond of puppies with lots of energy, so she spent a lot of time hiding in our bedroom. On our last evening here, we went to have dinner with Curtis’ grandma, and spent the evening visiting and looking through photo albums and scrapbooks she’s been working on.

On our last day in Michigan, the sun came out and it was finally starting to warm up a little — which was good news for us since we were moving back into the van for a few days! We said our goodbyes in the morning, then started making our way Southeast out of the state. Curtis’ last assignment of the season was in Pennsylvania, and we planned a route that would have us drive around 4-5 hours each day, allowing for lots of stops and some new counties.

Our first stop was in Jackson, MI, where we picked up a couple of groceries to get us through the drive, then made a short stop at a historic site – the first prison in Michigan. They offer tours of some of the prison, while other parts are apartments, but we just went to take a short walk, admire the walls, and find a letterbox. Next, we continued Southeast to another short stop, Cambridge Junction Historic State Park. The grounds were open, but no one else was here as it was still off season. We got out and went for a long walk on the trails, and read the informational signs. This used to be a stopping point for stagecoaches traveling between Detroit and Chicago in the early 19th century.

By this point, it was the late afternoon, and time to start thinking about where we wanted to sleep tonight. Southern Michigan doesn’t seem to have much for free places to park overnight in nature, but we thought we found some places that could work not far from where we were. This led us to driving down the gravel roads in Onsted State Game Area. When we first arrived, we found a spot that seemed like it could work, that was deep in the woods and with a lake view, but then we started to do a little more investigation online and concluded that it probably wasn’t legal to stay here — we might have been able to get away with it, but we don’t like to risk it. Since we still had daylight and knew tomorrow would be a longer drive across Ohio, we decided to go another hour more and spend the night at a travel plaza off of I-80. We had done this last year while traveling to PA, and knew that while it wouldn’t be a quiet and peaceful spot in the woods, it was legal and we would have a head start on our next day of driving.

We ended up at a rest stop East of Toledo, where we walked Charlotte around the pet area, made a quick dinner, and had a pleasant evening. It’s not something we like to do often, but since I was so excited to be back in the van for a short time, it was easy to romanticize the idea of being inside our cozy little home right next to the interstate. That evening, we did a little research on our intended route for the next day, and came up with a couple of fun stops.

The two stops we had planned for our Sunday drive had one thing in common: Dead Presidents. We discovered that not far from where we were camping was the home and gravesite of President Rutherford B. Hayes, in Fremont OH. After waking up and making a quick breakfast, we drove there to go on our morning walk. This was the first spot on our drive where it was really starting to feel like spring: there were blossoming trees, and lavender colored wildflowers covering the lawn (they were beautiful, but we read that they are also invasive). We visited the final resting spot of the president, where there were a dozen vultures circling around overhead. We weren’t able to tour the inside of the mansion, but we read that Hayes was a big fan of large wrap-around porches, and he certainly had a large one to enjoy during his final years. We did find it comical that one of the signs said something about how this was just a modest, average home that anyone could live in, while it boasts of 31 rooms and all the houses we were seeing around town weren’t anywhere near that size. Anyway, we had a pleasant walk around the grounds before continuing our drive.

From Fremont, we drove a few hours on different highways, filling in a couple of holes on our county map heading generally East. Our second stop for the day was in Canton, OH, at the William McKinley Memorial. My favorite memory from this stop was right after we arrived, I walked over to the front of the memorial to snap the above picture. Then I turned to walk back to Charlotte and Curtis, and saw that after walking about 20 feet from the van, she had found a nice shady spot to sit and had done just that. Just the sight of her must have made me smile so big because right then a couple of guys passing by asked why I was smiling. No reason, just the cutest dog in the world sitting over there in the shade, as content as can be! Curtis and I each took turns ascending the steps to the memorial to see the final resting place of McKinley, then we had a picnic in the lawn and let Charlotte lead us on a short walk.

Tonight’s camping spot was another hour Southeast from here once you included our indirect side roads to get even more counties — a free campground in Harrison State Forest. It was fairly busy that afternoon with people parking in the campground and walking down to the dam to go fishing, but only one other person camped here that evening. It ended up being a great spot, and we learned that there are a few other state forests in this area that also have free campgrounds. This felt like a great reward for making it all the way across Ohio, and we enjoyed relaxing outside for the rest of the evening.