Retirement Sabbatical Year of Discernment

         Tonight is our third night in New York state, and when I look at the map it seems so far from home in California. It's rather daunting to think about how far away it is, and we still have further to go as our eastern destination is Acadia National Park in Maine. After our short hike at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio on Thursday  August 20, we spent the night at a beautiful, very large KOA in Streetsboro, Ohio. There is pretty good consistency of quality amongst all the KOAs we've stayed in, but there is a great variety to their ambiance. The Streetsboro/Cleveland KOA had multiple fish ponds and a wide variety of camping and lodging choices. On Friday morning I walked around most of the perimeter and it was over a mile. There was one negative experience as a part of our stay though. The folks in the campsite next to us were having a good time around the campfire late into the night. Quiet hours were supposed to be 10:00 PM to 8:00 AM. As the ...

    Since last writing we have entered four more states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. All four states were first time for Rob, but I had been to Minnesota and Wisconsin 23 years ago when Ruth, our youngest daughter, and I went to see the western shore of Lake Michigan. 15 year old Ruth wanted to see a lake bigger than Lake Tahoe so she and I took off on a two week cross country adventure crossing through several states and camping along the way, including in some national parks. On this leg of our trip today was the first time we were in a National Park: Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. We did briefly visit a National Lake Shore and have seen some beautiful country, especially in some National Forest Campgrounds.     After leaving the Bismarck KOA on Thursday, August 13 we made a stop in Jamestown North Dakota to see the world's largest buffalo, a sculpture created in 1959, that had many billboards announcing that we were approaching it. The town of...