When we last saw our heroic seniors, they were enroute to Geneva Ohio where they hoped to obtain lunch.

Observations so far:

• Everywhere you look, even in the smallest  NY or OH towns, there’s a Dollar Tree, or a Dollar General or a Family Dollar store; nice ones, crappy ones, even seemingly abandoned ones. They are scattered about like Dunkie’s or CVS in New England.
• We have not hit ANY traffic since we left the Thruway back in NY. The Erie coast is pretty deserted in the off-season.

Geneva Ohio has a very attractive downtown with a clock in the center

And various Halloween themed mannequins scattered about, some pretty creepy.

But it seemed like a nice place and we stopped at Ree’s Corner to get a couple of sandwiches and two local rootbeers. Total for both meals was $12.28!

They even had a tiny but nice museum set up inside that included the contents of a drugstore in the 1940s.

But we had to reach Cleveland and finish the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame today and it was almost 1PM, so we headed west down Rt 2, which quickly became a four lane highway and we bombed along into Cleveland.

Note that everyone in the Midwest (except in Michigan) drives pretty sanely. Their attention to the rules convinced us to stay reasonably 5 or so MPH over the speed limit rather than going total Masshole on the highway. People were signaling lane changes, backing off to let strangers into line, even waving happily to each other. We knew we were in foreign territory.

We reached the RnR HoF about 2-ish. It was great, but of course I was only interested in a narrow stratum of the decades of hitmakers. I saw every loop of film of the Beatles, the Stones and the other “British Invasion” bands and most of the Motown and RnB stuff. Actually, most anything from around 1962 to about 1985, when my culture-acceptance window snapped closed for some reason.

(Fanboy Aside: Mick Taylor was an amazing guitarist and they should have found a way to keep him in the band.)

It was a fun take and we spent a couple of hours touring; lots of guitars, show outfits, more guitars, people I don’t care about (Elvis, Herman’s Hermits) and THEIR guitars, all of which was arranged tastefully in this futuristic pyramid.

We left the Hall and headed west out of The Cleve on Rt 2 towards Sandusky and Toledo. We crossed the bridge into Port Clinton and drove through pleasant lakeside towns until it was time to find a motel.

Our procedure included me firing up the iPhone and searching for local motels on Hotels.com, Hotel Tonight or Booking.com. All were equally good in their ability to locate all motels in the immediate area. All sucked at allowing you to reserve a room online. So we just used it to find the relatively cheapest decent hotel around and that’s what brought us to the Super 8 Motel in Millford Ohio, just outside of Toledo and then dinner at the adjacent Country Ridge Bar & Grill, where it’s “Country music night every night!” Food was good, though.

The next morning we woke up refreshed and took I-280 to I-75 straight north into Detroit.