This month we headed to Ohio early. We usually go to Florida, fly out from there for the Iowa show, and them drive up to Ohio the week before Great Lakes starts. Instead we left Georgia right after the show there ended and headed directly to Ohio. Once there we would fly out from Pittsburgh to the Iowa and new Seattle Show.
Ohio is within a days drive from Georgia but it'd make for a long day. Sharon and I hate 10+ hour days, so before all of this we thought we'd stop in North Carolina to visit some friends. Our good friends Robbie and April, who just had an adorable baby girl, invited us for dinner so we stopped of to spend some time with them. After that we drove into Charlotte to meet Riki at Jillian's where EJ's wife Charity works. EJ does promotional work for the Palooza shows. It was nice to see our N.C. friends. After meeting with them we headed to the exit where the Carolina Festival is and stopped for the night. That put us within seven hours of the Ohio campsite.
We got a good night's sleep and headed to Ohio. [Driving to OH Part I - Windows Media / RealMedia] [Driving to OH Part II - Windows Media / RealMedia] On the way we had to drive through what we call the Tamarac Triangle. [Stopping at Tamarac Part I - Windows Media / RealMedia] It's an area that we've had all kinds of trouble in. Flat tires and mental breakdowns over too much driving are just a few. Riki was about 10 miles ahead of us so I told him to stop and we'd all have lunch. [Stopping at Tamarac Part II - Windows Media / RealMedia] We had a great lunch and headed on our way without any problems at all. Maybe we've finally broken the Tamarac curse.
 Sharon, April and Robbie |
 Little German place in Akron |
 A town named Sharon |
We arrived at our camp at about 8:00pm. The timing was perfect. I had just enough time to get the trailer parked, leveled, and hooked up before dark. It had to be one of the quickest setups I've ever done.
I only had one day before we left for Iowa so we made sure to hit a couple of our favorite vineyards. Our single favorite is Laurello. It's literally adjacent to our campground. We ride our bikes there quite often. We've also made friends with the family that owns it.
 Jef at Laurello |
 My sexy wife and sexy wine |
 Sharon is into wine |
Other than that, the only other events worth mentioning were our two performance trips to Iowa and Seattle. Those trips will be covered in my new travelogues.
