2025 Covered Bridges and Winery Tour

This year's Covered Bridges and Winery Tour will be held on June 7, 2025, and include a few bonus stops along the way, time permitting.

The tour will begin and end at the home of Dale Thomas, 5790 Laskey Rd, Rome (Hartsgrove Twp), Ohio, and will include a pot luck dinner at the end of the day.

Here's the plan...

We will be leaving to start our tour at 10:00am. Please bring a contribution to the pot luck dinner, which will be left at the house under the watchful eye and care of my wife, Diane, while we are gone.  Burgers, dogs and bottled water will be provided. We ask that you bring a covered dish to share and any alternative beverage you may wish to consume.

The first stop on our tour will be at The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. At the center of the 50 acre Shrine located in Windsor Ohio, stands the world's largest statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary's likeness stands 50 feet tall and is covered by over 450,000 mosaic tiles. Definitely an impressive sight, especially when lit up at night, and is known to be a tourist destination.

Does anyone know who Don King is?

The famous boxing promoter owns a home and beautiful property in the area, and we will drive right past it on the way to our next stop, the Windsor Mills Covered Bridge. This bridge is of Town Lattice Truss construction and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Then it is off to the End of the Commons General Store in nearby Mesopotamia (locally known as "Mespo").  They promote themselves as::

Built in 1840, the End of the Commons General Store is Ohio's oldest operating general store. We are located in the heart of Amish country in historic Mesopotamia, Ohio, and only 40 minutes east of Cleveland. We stock over 1,000 bulk food products, hard-to-find houseware & kitchen gadgets, homemade fudge, hand-dipped ice cream, over 150 varieties of old-fashioned soda & penny candy. Stop in for lunch or dinner at the Commons Cafe. Sample many foods from Amish country & enjoy a trip into the past!

And I will attest that it is hard to argue with their claim of having the Best Fry Pies in Amish Country. 🙂

Next it is off to The Village of Orwell, where we will pass the Don King Training Camp on the way to the Mayfield Road Creamery, a cheese shop, which just happens to be about a quarter mile from a popular roadside produce stand owned and operated by the Jon Squibbs family. Each of us will have the opportunity to visit either one or both of the popular local businesses.

Since I've always found it difficult to enjoy a charcuterie board with great cheese without some great wine to go along with it, our next stop will be the first of the three wineries we will visit, the Stable Winery. Built in the 1930's, the stable was originally constructed to house race horses owned by Andover's Dr. Lowery M. Guilinger. Even after the automobile became popularized, Dr. Guilinger insisted on continuing to ride a horse to his house calls. Since then, the stable was converted to a residential home before being purchased by the Litwiler Family in 2017 for the sole purpose of building a winery from the ground up. With 120+ beautiful acres and 2 additional barns totaling 9,000+ sq ft in usable space, they have big plans for the future - including a wedding and event venue, a bed-and-breakfast, and even a possible music festival.

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While it may be difficult to pry ourselves away from this beautiful venue, the Emerine Estates Winery, home of Emerine Estates exotic Fruit and Traditional Grape Wines, is just around the corner and will be awaiting our arrival. The winery was born in 2003 as a culmination of the family legacy that has stood the test of time, since 1917, creating and maintaining an excellence in wine production.

Our tour will then take us back to nature with a visit to the Grand River Conservation Campus. As part of The Nature Conservancy’s Morgan Swamp Preserve, the Grand River Conservation Campus remains a place where people can enjoy nature through numerous passive recreation opportunities, all within a beautiful backdrop of unique habitats, rare plants and abundant wildlife. In fact, a hemlock yellow-birch forest community, one of the rarest swamp forest communities in Ohio, still thrives on the Campus grounds. The Campus offers a number of amenities that are free and open to the public, including the Dr. James K. Bissell Nature Center, and is likely a place to which you will want to return.

At this point, time permitting, we may be able to visit a small local cemetery with a history going back to the early 1800's, including veteran's graves dated during the Civil War years. It has proven to be difficult to find any historical information on the site, but I will continue to look and make available to you whatever I can find.

A visit to another of our historical covered bridges, the Riverdale Road Covered Bridge is next. This 114' long bridge was originally built in 1874 and has been upgraded periodically since. It is also of Town Lattice Truss construction as was the Windsor Mills covered bridge we visited earlier this morning.

So ends the educational portion of our day. Next on our agenda is a visit to what has become my favorite winery, the Day Dream Farm Winery. Looking for a way to transition into their retirement years on their modest three-acre property, Craig and Suzi knew they could create a small wine tasting room that would feel like home, offering a laid-back, welcoming atmosphere, as if you were spending time in a friend's backyard. Their niche—what sets them apart—is their mead, or honey wine. Made from honey, mead is the oldest known alcoholic beverage. They have taken this ancient drink and crafted something truly unique, infusing it with spices and fruits to create a distinct, flavorful experience.

When we finally bid adieu to Craig, Suzi and their incredible team, we will head back to our starting point to enjoy a leisurely pot luck dinner to unwind and recap the day with good food and friends.

In the event you might want to continue your day with another winery visit, I have just the destination for you. Located very near our first stop of the day is the Serenity Winery. I must confess that as of this writing, I have not yet visited them... but I hope to rectify that deficiency soon because they have been highly recommended to me. It is yet another locally owned and operated venue that was designed to be a great place where others could enjoy not only their Serenity specialty wines, but also other fabulous wines from different regions.

So mark the date on your calendar and come prepared to enjoy a full day of fun and friendship while exploring the hidden gems of Ashtabula County.




For more information on the bridges, check out The Cleland Clan Covered Bridge Tour.