I woke up the morning of August 23rd at the Sandusky / Bay Shore KOA. I drove over to Cedar Point, not realizing it was a theme park. Research, before you visit a place, is very important! I spent $20 to access the parking lot, look at the theme park, and drive away. A few miles later I found Shoreline Park and spent a few minutes there before heading to my first car museum.
When your mechanic recommends you check out a car museum, you listen! The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum was absolutely amazing. Housed in the original Auburn Automobile Company’s headquarters are three stories of beautiful classic luxury Auburn, Cord, and other beautiful cars. If you visit and love cars, give yourself at least an hour to fully appreciate all three floors. And, a welcome addition, the John Dillinger Tommy Gun, is on display; the very one he stole when he broke out of the Auburn jail in 1944. Read the story here.
Next, I headed to the Studebaker National Museum. After the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum, I’ll admit it was a bit of a letdown. It was only one room in a larger museum, with a handful of cars. They were still good looking vehicles, as you’ll see below.
I ended the day at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore campsite. When I arrived I learned it was a self-check-in campsite. You select a site, pay at the machine, and go on to your site. This is when I learned the valuable lesson to drive around the sites before you select one. I did not do this, and when I got to site 31, I was not happy with what awaited me. Instead of a pull-in site, it was (I think) a park alongside, which meant toting all of my gear, and I’d already learned the closer you can get to the picnic table, the easier setting up camp would be. So, instead of making it work, I selected a new site (thus paying for two sites). As I pulled out of the original site, I backed into a pillar and gave my poor baby her first dent on the bumper. Lesson. Learned!
Next time, we’ll take a meandering drive through the suburbs of Chicago to visit Oak Park, where Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio are preserved, as well as the Unity temple he designed.
Until then…