report from the road: Geneva on the Lake, Ohio

Heading in a somewhat southwesterly direction from New York, we traced our path back through a corner of Pennsylvania and then to Ohio. It's really difficult to find a route that doesn't go through Ohio. Now on the way home we stayed at Indian Springs in Geneva on the Lake, instead of the smaller Kenisee's Grand River Camp in Geneva where we had camped on our way to New York. The highlight of this stay was our visit to the Finnish American Cultural Center in Ashtabula.

Following our GPS directions for our campground in Geneva on the Lake in Ohio, we exited the freeway at Ashtabula, turned the corner, proceeded one block, and surprise! a narrow drawbridge.

We visited the Finnish American Cultural Center in Ashtabula. Since the door was locked (the volunteer for the afternoon had left early), we expected to see only the outside of the building. However, Leroy Hurst, another museum volunteer, was mowing the lawn. He put away the lawnmower and gave us a wonderful one-hour tour inside the museum.

I am very interested in visiting Finnish cultural centers because of my family heritage. My grandmother, Marie Ek, came from Turku, Finland, to marry my grandfather, Jacob Makinen, who had earlier emigrated from Finland to Bingham Canyon, Utah. My father, John Henry Makinen, was born in Utah in 1917.

At the end of the tour we bought a book about Finns in America and a print of Mr. Hurst's painting of a sailboat race from Ashtabula harbor across Lake Erie to Canada.

We highly recommend that you visit the Finnish American Cultural Center. We're going again the next time we're in Ashtabula.