Trish & Anne RV Adventures

After over 4 years of planning to get to Yellowstone National Park, we are on the way! Our trip in 2020 was sidelined by COVID, 2021 by construction on the RV park, and 2022 by floods and a family wedding. But this year is a go!

We left Massachusetts on Thursday, August 17 headed to my cousins in Bloomsburg again. On the way we met Doug and Lizabeth for lunch and to pickup some information that they had from their trips to Yellowstone and Idaho. This time it was just an overnight stop with Robyn and Billy and their puppy Lucas, but we sure appreciate the hospitality at Halfway Acres – water and electric hook-ups, and a wonderful pork chop meal.

Driving through Pennsylvania is mountains and farms – just some beautiful scenery. And I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the GPS when we were taking this road.

On Friday, as we were driving through PA we stopped in a town called Bellefonte. Our first stop was the Miles-Potter-Humes House, which was built in 1816 by Joseph Miles, the co-founder of the Centre Furnace Iron Works. It was sold to the Potters in 1830 and after going through several generations in 1934 it was donated to be a library when Ann Humes passed away. When the main library moved into the abandoned A&P across the street in 1977, the county historical and genealogical records were left in the house, which is now the Centre County Library & Historical Museum. The attendant in the library was very knowledgeable and gave us nice tour of the building and museum.

Some of the articfacts in the museum are above. That’s a Bicentennial ABC Quilt made by a local 2nd grade class in 1976. In the middle is a portrait of Simon Harper, in a frame he made of nails when he was in a rest home after his civil war service. On the right is a portrait of Lucy Winter Potter, one of the owner’s and also a great-aunt of Abraham Lincoln.

Interior shots of the museum, and some artifacts from the Titan Metal Manufacturing Plant which used to be in Bellefonte. After the museum we walked down the main street to enjoy some of the architecture.

That’s me on a book bench in front of the new library, and our RV parked next to the Miles-Potter-Humes house.

Trish outside the County Courthouse and a statue of Andrew Gregg Curtin, one of the five Pennsylvania governors who lived in Bellefonte. The others were William Bigler, William Fisher Packer, James Addams Beaver and Daniel H. Hastings. (I didn’t know one of them.)

Robyn and Billy had told us about the Most Magnificent McDonald’s which was in Warren, OH – so we went by. Well, it’s not so magnificent anymore. The two story fountain, the piano playing Hamburgler, and the NYSE ticker are all gone – about 10 years ago according to the clerk. We felt we had to get an ice cream and the we were on the road again, glad it wasn’t too far off our path.

Friday night we boon-docked at the Messenger Century Farm, in Chagrin Falls, OH that we found through our Harvest Host membership. They are a blueberry farm, with 4 acres and growing of blueberry bushes. They have a couple of horses and a mule. Before Trish cooked us a chicken dinner, we walked around the property and went to their little porch store to get some jam and bread mixes. Amy, Dee and Bill were wonderful hosts.

Some views of the farm including Trish and the RV in our evening parking spot. That weather vane was made by a 12-year old Amish boy. And that’s a bluebird and an evening selfie.

We sat outside the RV for our dinner, and there was a beautiful sunset. And then we started our trip Rummikub tournament.

The reason we headed this way west, was to stop at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It is the 9th most-visited National Park, mostly because it sits between Akron and Cleveland. It’s a bit of a different NP as it includes a dense road network, small towns, and metro parks, and public and private attractions. Our first stop on Saturday morning was the Boston Mill Visitor Center. We got several recommendations for places to walk to get to see birds and wildlife.

So after the visitors center our first stop was the Kendall Lake area – couldn’t believe we had to walk up and down two hills to get to the lake – though if we could read the map better it would have just been one long downhill to get there – which was one long uphill to get back to the RV.

That’s Trish standing in a tunnel that ran under the toboggan run that was set up each winter from the 1930’s until 1990. Kept the pedestrians off the course.

This is the wildlife we saw at this stop – swallow-tail butterfly, cedar wax-wings, Canada geese and great heron – nothing too exotic, but it was a beautiful day to be walking.

After having some fruit for lunch, we went to the Beaver Marsh area. It was a Saturday, so it did take us two parking lots to find a place we could fit the RV. This walk was along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail – a nice level boardwalk and well maintained trail. The canal was built in the 1820’s and 30’s and connected the Ohio River to Lake Erie, via Akron. The towpath is where the oxen pulled the barges up and down the canal.

Female wood ducks – no one we talked to had seen any males

Better shot of a cedar wax-wing and a red-winged blackbird.

We spotted this hummingbird and a view of the Cuyahoga River that was part of the canal system. It’s also the river that burned in Cleveland in 1969 – leading to many of the environmental laws.

Our last stop in the park was at the Brandywine Falls. After all the walking we had done, we didn’t take the walk to the bottom of the falls (130 steps down and then back up), we just walked to where we could get a view of the falls.

Using the power from the falls, there was once a thriving village at the falls, with a gristmill, sawmill, distillery, and woolen mill. The only things remaining are some of the foundations of the buildings.

It was then time to head to our stop for the night just outside Sandusky, Ohio. After Trish made stir fry, we made a stop at the ice-cream truck that was visiting the park that evening – we settled on some very good milkshakes. But that was the best part of the stay, as there was an industrial building across the road, and there was an acrid odor and noise from the railroad going by all night. Needless to say, we will not be going back to the Sandusky Milan RV Park.

Until next time, travel safe!