Thursday morning, June 13th, was the beginning of our trip back to Norton in our new coach.  However, we needed to make one short stop along the way in Albany to look at an Independent living facility that Rob’s father had become interested in there.

Normally we would split this trip up into three equidistant 4-6 hour segments and stay over somewhere two nights. One of those nights would preferably have been at Turning Stone in Verona, NY (near Syracuse) figuring it was just 3 hours to Albany from there and about another 3 hours home.  However there was no availability there for the night we needed.

Since campgrounds are few and far between in NY and we would be trying to book sites on Fathers Day weekend, we had to regroup.  We decided to change our timetable and make the trip in 4 shorter driving segments and stay over 3 nights instead. For the first night we were able to get a reservation at Indian Creek in Geneva on the Lake, OH which was about 300 miles from Spartan in Charlotte, MI.

It was going to be about 5 or 6 hours of driving as you can see from the photo of the GPS above.  The biggest excitement of the day was passing the “Google Maps guy”! Imagine having that job – just driving around all day with a spinning thingy on the top of your car.  Cool!  Wonder if we’ll be in any of the Streetview images? (so far we aren’t)

Initially the weather cooperated, although we figured we would run into some rain along the way since we were following last night’s storm eastward.  All was well until we reached the campground – figures, just as we were about to go into the office to check in, there was torrential downpour.

All the roads into Geneva on the Lake have a lot of low trees and our roof antenna’s kept hitting them, but the GPS chose state road 534 which is also congested and twisty. We found out later when we went exploring in the van that Austin Rd was a better, straight run with fewer low trees.

In the campground office, everyone was talking about how much rain they had had over the past week. Lots of evidence of that at our campsite #246 – it was surrounded by large puddles and was a bit muddy. Well after all, we were in Geneva on the Lake, we just didn’t expect the lake to be sharing our site!

Once we were settled, we went out to explore the area.  The town of Geneva which we had driven through to get to the campground was pretty cute.

Geneva on the Lake on the other hand, population 1100 people, is a typical waterfront touristy resort type of place with restaurants, arcades, and wineries. According to About.com, “In the early 1900s, the scenic location was home to dozens of cottages and was popular with the Midwest “gentry,” including John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone.”

That night we ended up getting take out from a Chinese restaurant in Geneva which was decent enough.

In the morning, we drove back to Geneva and had breakfast at Mary’s Diner which was very good and the prices were right – a full breakfast with meat for under $10 for the two of us.

The campground, which was purchased by Sun Resorts in January, 2013 was okay, all gravel secondary roads and sites,  decent length pull through’s, etc., but as previously mentioned there were lots of deep puddles during rain although the gravel remained firm.  The soggy dog poop all over our site didn’t help the already messy situation. Sites 231-239 have frontage on a small pond (East Lake).

On the down side, the WIFI was not free and the Verizon reception was very poor (weak 3G) making this spot difficult for those of us that like to be online. Also, OTA TV reception was poor. Many seasonals here but the park appeared to be better kept than a lot of seasonal resorts we have seen. There appear to be sufficient reservable sites also and they were mostly filled with big rigs.

We probably would not return, it’s a bit too far off I-90 to be a good overnight spot, plus those low trees were very annoying. Geneva is cute, but Geneva on the lake is a tad on the kitschy side.

Back at the campground, we got ready for our departure (once again getting our feet wet since we didn’t have our boots on board).  Stay tuned for details about our next stop!