Thompson, OH and Geneva-on-the-Lake

Our next campground was located in Thompson, Ohio, in what seemed like the heart of Ohio wine country, and about 10 minutes from Lake Erie. 

This KOA was huge – in the 5 nights that I was there, I never saw about 1/2 of the campsites. There was a huge fishing pond and also a large swim pond which had a doggie beach. Fred was happy to swim there. They also had a self-service dog wash and Fred got bathed 3 times that week to get the stinky pond smell and sand (from Lake Erie) out. One day I even inflated the inflatable paddle board and got Fred out on the lake. It seems Fred’s idea of retrieving is jumping off the board, getting the toy and bringing it to dry land rather than getting back on the board directly from within the pond. Next time we’ll be using a long line so I can reel him back in!

Small world coincidences are bound to happen and it turned out that my friend of a friend Jayne lived nearby and was planning on attending the same Woof Wednesday event at the nearby Debonne vineyard as i was. It was nice to catchup with Jayne!

Fred and I went over to Breakwater Beach at Geneva State Park for his Lake Erie swim adventure. The beach was crowded but there was still space. Lots of people had dogs, most of which had no interest in the water. Everyone wanted to meet Fred and we even had one little girl who raced Fred out to his toy. After giving her a head start, she did beat him, but it was funny to see how he accelerated when he realized what was happening. Good news was she didn’t take his toy – just handed it over to him and raced him back to shore.

After swimming in Lake Erie, we drove over to Geneva-on-the-Lake to walk around a bit and get something to eat. 

The town has these GOTL letters and I thought it would be fun to photograph Fred inside the O.  He didn’t quite agree and I got a few outtakes and no good shot.  Oh well!

I would describe GOTL as a boardwalk town on a main drag instead of an actual boardwalk. Arcades, food, t-shirt shops…. 

One thing was neat was that Grumpy’s fresh-squeezed lemonade was actually that…. The girl cut the lemon, squeezed it, sugared it, added water and ice and mixed it… not like these pre-fabs that they just pour in a glass.  Fred and I both enjoyed it!

I also saw this motorcycle with sidecar for dogs… I wish I had seen the dogs in it!