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Day 17: Cuyahoga Valley National Park

 Tuesday, Sept 20, 2022


From my AirBnb in Sturgis, drove in the morning to Shipshewana, a small town which has a sizeable Amish community. It is also a popular tourist spot for antiques and handicrafts.  It was interesting to watch the Amish horse buggies amidst the car traffic. Also saw some of them using  tricycles to get around. I didn't get a chance to stay too long, since I had a long drive ahead to Cuyahoga Valley National Park.





After a long drive through Ohio, reached Cuyahoga Valley National Park around 2:30pm. Going there was not originally in my plan, but I got greedy and at the last minute, added the 250 mile detour in order to tick off one more national park. What would have been a relaxing day, turned into a long, tiring driving marathon. I guess it is ingrained in us to bite more than we can chew, try to be overachievers. This was a reminder for me that sometimes it is better to slow down and pull back. 

 The park itself is quite nice, beautiful green forests and meadows, lakes, rock formations. I did the short Ledges Trail hike. Also spent time at the Everett covered bridge, the last remaining one in the area. 

 





From Cuyahoga Valley, it was another long drive to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I visited my good friend and classmate from IIT. It was wonderful to reconnect and catch up again with him and his wife, enjoying their hospitality and relaxing after the long, tiring day. 

 

 

 


 Before retiring for the night, plugged into a 110V outlet outside their house for trickle charging my car. I wanted to make sure I had enough charge to get to the next Tesla supercharger safely in the morning.

The raw numbers for the day:

  • 445 miles driving, 9100 steps walking
  • 3 Tesla supercharger stops, 110V trickle charging
  • 3 states - Indiana, Ohio, Michigan

Next:  Day 18: Niagara Falls, Canada (Sept 21, 2022)

Comments

  1. VisheshOctober 1, 2022 at 10:32 PM

    "I guess it is ingrained in us to bite more than we can chew, try to be overachievers. This was a reminder for me that sometimes it is better to slow down and pull back." Life's been teaching me this lesson big-time over the past couple years. The necessary consequence is that we cannot achieve everything we want to in life, nor everything that's expected of us -- and certainly not both. It's taken me a few years to come to peace with the fact that I'm not going to be as perfect a radiologist or teacher as I dreamed of being, nor as perfect a husband, brother, or son. But those dreams and goals still give me a compass with which to navigate a compromising path between all the priorities, which is most consistent with my values even if I'm not excelling in any one of them. There's a lyric from Disney's Encanto that's been resonating in my brain recently: "What can you do when you know who you wanna be is imperfect?"

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