On Our Way to Ohio

When I first talked to Cameron about taking a senior spring break trip, he wasn't really excited about traveling very far.  He had already decided that he wanted to go to Direct Admit Day at Kelley, but other than that he really didn't want to go anywhere else.  Samuel had invited him to go to Puerto Rico for spring break, but the Bloomington event conflicted with those plans.  I finally told him that I wanted to do something with him for at least a couple of days and then suggested going to The Ohio State Reformatory as an option.  Thankfully, Cameron agreed that the prison where Shawshank Redemption was filmed would be a great idea.

This morning, Doug, Cameron and I left from Bloomington for our three day trip through the state of Ohio.  The filming sites of Shawshank Redemption would fill at least a full day of activities, but we needed some other places to visit on our trip.  As we had to drive through Columbus, I suggested that we make a stop at Ohio State.  Cameron had always talked about visiting each of the Big Ten Universities and OSU would be number six on his list.  He agreed right away and we made that our first stop in Ohio.  

Doug had visited The Ohio State University in 1987 with his mom on his junior year spring break college visit trip.  He liked it, but wasn't really interested in attending college there.  Cameron and I could agree with his opinion.  It was a beautiful campus, but extremely big.  After a drive through tour, we did park and walk through the Union and a few other spots on campus.  I believe that we could have spent all day walking and still not seen all of it.  After our self guided tour, we started looking for a lunch stop.  The first couple of recommendations were a little bit too sketchy for us.  We finally found Ethyl and Tank across the street from OSU and really enjoyed it.  

Once we were done with our time in Columbus, we head toward our hotel in Ashland, Ohio.  We got out of the car a couple of times on our hour long trip to see some of the filming sites of Shawshank Redemption.  They were fun, but a little underwhelming compared to the Ohio State Reformatory which we planned to visit tomorrow morning.  It was still fun to get pictures taken at them.  We found a bowling alley on our way into Ashland.  Doug and I hadn't bowled since the pandemic.  It was a lot of fun and I actually won a game.  Our hotel was next to a Buffalo Wild Wings, so we made that our dinner choice.  We ended our night early as we were all exhausted from our busy weekend.  There was a Seinfeld marathon on at the hotel which we all enjoyed before heading to bed.