Day 12 and 13: July 9-10, 2007--Columbus, Ohio

The final day of our trip arrived and we were still 2 hours away from Columbus in Wheeling, West Virginia. We got up early and headed back towards Columbus. Along the way we stopped in Zanesville, Ohio at a pottery store. This part of Ohio was well-known for pottery. We didn't buy anything, too difficult to get it home, but we did see some pretty cool things that might have been nice to buy.

On to Columbus, Ohio. Before we knew it we had arrived. We drove through the heart of town and stopped at a few places we read might be interesting.

We drove passed the state capitol building, stopped at a topiary garden that turned out to be not so great. Then we drove right around the corner and stopped by the home of James Thurber, poet, playwright, author. The home was furnished as it was when he lived there and it also had lots of photos of famous authors who had been there. It also contained a lot of memorabilia from his life. Several of his cartoons were there along with letters and some of his manuscripts.

We were pretty tired after all the traveling we had been doing these passed almost two weeks. We decided to head on over to our hotel and just relax the final evening. We had an early flight the next morning and nowdays you need to be at the airport almost 2 hours before your flight so we needed to get up about 4:30 in the morning.

We awoke Tuesday morning, showered and started out to the car. We thought we'd miss the free breakfast that morning since it didn't actually start until 6 am. But when we went into the lobby to check out they were setting out the breakfast food so we got to have a cup of coffee, a bowl of cereal and a banana on our way out the door. Our drive to the airport was uneventful. We dropped off our little red rental car and walked into the airport where we checked in and headed for our gate. The Skybus flight left and arrived on time and the friend we had arranged to pick us up arrived to whisk us home. We arrived in Bellingham at 8:45 am which might seem like an awfully fast light but remember that we had a time change so even though the flight did take about 3 hours we still arrived home in time to have the whole day ahead of us which was great. Got in the house, started some laundry and laid down for a long nap, finally back in my own comfy bed! What a great trip it has been. We saw parts of 9 states--Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. And while we didn't see anywhere near everyhting these states had to offer, we can at least say we've been there. 38 states down, 12 to go! Whoa, can't wait!