Inkcarceration is a huge festival that lasts for three days. It is held on the grounds of the Mansfield Prison, which many people may know was the prison used for the outdoor shots during the movie “Shawshank Redemption”. This three day festival hosts dozens of bands on three stages.
Crystal bought the tickets months ago and we joined thousands of festival goers for music, food, and more. Some of the bands that we enjoyed seeing were Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, The Offspring, and Shinedown. Unfortunately Filter missed the festival and did not perform, because of the Cloudstrike outage that messed up quite a few flights.
One of the amazing things we got to enjoy was a tour of the Mansfield Prison. It is unbelievable that they used to house over a thousand people in this prison and the size of the cells was so small and cramped. There is a tour that is more guided and includes mannequins and props to help the stories come alive and we are considering doing that.

There was a lot of discussion about where to watch the eclipse this year. The two cities of Akron and Cleveland were in the direct path of the total solar eclipse, and so it would be a great view, but there were going to be a mass of people there. Ohio school districts shut down for what was normally a school day, so there would be entire families in a good many of the spots around a city to watch the eclipse.
To avoid this crowd was kind of a tricky problem, because the eclipse had a path and the best way to view it was to be as close to center as possible. Crystal had a solution – a rest stop off the freeway. This ended up being the perfect idea. There were picnic tables, restrooms, and there was plenty of parking. There were quite a few people who had the same idea, but it was not crowded. We already had the glasses from the partial solar eclipse we watched in Columbus several years ago. This was the last total eclipse that will be viewable from the United States until 2044.