Ohio and Michigan (19-20 May 2007)

2 nights in Niagara Falls and it was time to drive to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Obviously escaping Niagara is easier said than done, but as we queued in our car at the border, we met all sorts of people including a friendly taxi driver who didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. Fortunately, this immigration officer didn’t ask if I wanted US citizenship (I may have answered ‘yes’), but we did declare our 2 cups of Starbucks coffee under US law for imports. Our coffee wasn't confiscated and our trip continued through fairly unexciting countryside, to a Cleveland shopping mall. Excited that we were finally in Ohio for the first time, we stopped to take a picture of a local car, bought some Ohian clothes and headed on our way to Michigan. As we’d only met a few random people today, R decided to speed so we could have an encounter with an Ohian police officer. We chatted about all sorts of things, including our history of getting speeding tickets but eventually he sent us on our way with just a warning.


Next stop, Michigan. As R had a friend who’s the pastor of a Grand Rapids type church, we just happened to time our arrival on Saturday night, in time to check out the church the next morning. The words 'meet you in the church foyer' seemed quite straight forward until we had 4000 people to contend with but we managed to locate one of R's friends and then another one, and then about 3 more. It turns out half of Dallas were visiting Grand Rapids that weekend and so R was able to enjoy a Texan reunion whilst I tried to explain to them all that I wasn’t French (not sure how that rumour started). R and I said a tearful farewell as shown by the photo below, before I went on my merry way towards Milwaukee (who did invent that name?)