Ohio to Ontario

After Palmyra we drove to Kirtland Ohio, which is in the suburbs of Cleveland. We stayed pretty close to Kirtland in Mentor. It was rather intriguing to see names from LDS church history, such as Mentor, Kirtland and Hiram on road signs. Most of the historic sites belong to the LDS church. The thing we most enjoyed was the Kirtland temple itself, which is amazing. It is way bigger than I had imagined. The tour was a bit less intense than some of them have been.
On the way to Detroit we stopped off in an Amish settlement called Mesopotamia, where Mark bought about 10 different bottles of root beer. We saw people in carriages, and ploughing their fields using horses. It was also the first time in the US that we have seen clothes hanging on a clothes line!
In Detroit we were at a boutique bed-and-breakfast, which was rather lovely, but didn't have a fridge. My visit at Wayne State University went well. We went out to dinner to a kosher cafe at a jewish community centre with our host, Ken Chelst.
Detroit itself was pretty depressed. The roads are worn out, there are empty buildings all around, and people hanging about on the street. We were happy to make our way over the border to Canada. We were very lucky that a very helpful person at Herz made it possible for us to keep the same car, which saved us a lot of messing around, and meant we continued to have the GPS unit.
We had worked out that if we stayed in Cambridge or thereabouts we would be about midpoint between the different places we wanted to visit. It worked out very well. We stayed in a "Super 8" just by the Freeway. the first night there we had an outstanding meal at a chinese buffet - Mandarin. On Saturday we visited Niagara Falls, on Sunday we spent the day with the Hingstons, who have known Mark's family since before he was born, and on Monday and Tuesday we drove down to London, where I was visiting the Richard Ivey Business School.
That was an extremely welcoming and successful visit. I think I was able to provide some value for them, as well as gaining some ideas. On the way back to the motel on Tuesday night we decided to drive through Cambridge. On the way through what turned out to be one of the nicer towns around there, we noticed a Petty St. This drew our attention, and right on the corner was ... "The Golden Kiwi", a bar and restaurant owned by a man from Timaru, with NZ themed decorations. It was great.