Day 9: June 14, 2021
Back In My Home State

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I'm back in Westfield, NY. I ended up at the Theater Motel for the second time on this trip after driving until past 7:00 for the third day in a row. It seems there is a motel desert east of here. I also ended up at Calarco's Restaurant for the second time of the trip. I tried to eat somewhere else but it didn't work out. My second visit to the Main Diner was 100% intentional and preplanned. The counter was again empty when I entered but the rest of the place surely wasn't and the counter didn't remain that way very long.

I spotted these statues out of the corner of my eye when I passed through Westfield eastbound and decided that, if I was going to keep passing them, I ought to find out what they were. I knew the story of a young girl writing to Abraham Lincoln suggesting that he grow a beard and even knew that the two actually met. I did not know that she lived in Westfield. Abe and the girl, Grace Bedell, met when he was traveling east to his inauguration.

I recognized this Norge globe in North East (the town), OH, despite its battleship gray camouflage. Of course it is right in front of a laundry.

The first picture is the second of only two that I took in Pennsylvania on this pass. I took it to show that solid cloud cover. The second picture was taken in Ohio three miles and ten minutes later. Rain would continue through all forty miles and seventy minutes it took to get beyond Painesville.

Sometimes it can seem like every other Ohio town of any size contains the home of some president. I believe that Garfield's home in Mentor is the only one of those I have not visited, and that would not change today. For one thing, tours of the home have to be reserved in advance these days. For another, spending time at a site in my home state while on a nationwide excursion doesn't seem quite proper.

Although my pictures didn't show it, Downtown Cleveland was really rather congested when I came through last Monday. Today, exactly one week later, even the most central parts, which were jam packed a week ago, were wide open. I came through about 11:00 AM last week and about 1:00 PM today. Do two hours make that much difference?

A few miles west of Cleveland, between Avon Lake and Lorain, the road gets rather close to Lake Erie. It looks pretty good with clouds and lake and a fence and stone walls, but looks even better with just clouds and lake.

I've got my own G.A.R. Highway sign picture now. And an Historic US-6 and regular US-6 signs, too.

I know absolutely nothing about these three milestones and I believe that I should know a little something about at least one of them. Here's my story and a bit of conjecture. When I started this journey, the Points Of Interest list for the US-20 portion contained a set of coordinates labeled "B269-C270 marker". I can see that it was created on July 12, 2020 but I have no memory of it or where I got the information to create it. The name suggested to me that it might be a mile marker but I also thought the numbers could be a range of estimates. Something along the lines of "220, 221... Whatever it takes." I made an attempt to check out the coordinates when I passed headed east on the first day of this trip but they on on the north edge of a four-lane divided highway and I was traveling in the other lanes. Since US-20 and the Yellowstone Trail run together here, I intended to get serious about it on my way west.

The coordinates (N41° 22.241' W83° 10.157') lie just west of the town of Fremont, Ohio. The marker was certainly on my mind as I passed through town and that probably had something to do withe me noticing the marker in the first picture more or less in a business parking lot. The second picture is of the marker that triggered this whole thing and the third is of a marker a bit farther west. My educated conjecture is that 'B' and 'C' indicate Buffalo and Chicago and that 'LS' and 'P' indicate Lower Sandusky (Fremont's name prior to 1849) and Perrysburg. My very shallow online searching hasn't identified the roads these markers were created for but I'll try harder when I get home. Or someone will take pity on me and just tell me. Or maybe I'll even remember what prompted me to create that POI.


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