Millbrook Resort near Jefferson, Ohio

Tuesday, July 28, 2020
MillBrook Resort, Ohio, United States
GREETINGS FROM THE “FORGOTTEN CORNER OF OHIO”!
I am sure someone will be offended by that title to this blog, but come on, unless you really knew someone from  the “snow belt of Ohio” what do you really know about Ashtabula? Oh, you’re an expert on Conneaut? Maybe you know all about the County Seat, which is Jefferson.
First, if you like I, do not have a connection to the area, you are in for some surprises if you visit. We ended up South of Jefferson by the closure of all camp grounds in NY state. We had to spend a week somewhere before our reservation at Gettysburg and we were able to find a nice campground south of Jefferson which we found out later is the County seat of Ashtabula. We arrived on Monday,
We had ended our time at Rocky Fort by driving the backroads on Sunday evening, which is the night young Amish all meet, sing church songs and a few lucky ones get a buggy ride home with the start of a courtship that almost immediately leads to a marriage. My take on this is THREE AND OUT, the offering is done by a 3rd partly friend of the male and if the female accepts it is a cause of celebration there is no casual dating. If after 4-6 weeks the boy asks the girl for a second buggy ride from singing, it is equal to an engagement. A third ride is almost always followed by a marriage in the fall.
You might wonder why an ornery Amish fellow can’t just follow up buggy ride #2 with a new start with a different girl? But the social discussion between the Amish women would quickly catch him and NO one would go on that first ride with him if he behaved that way.
Like I said we ended our stay at Rocky Fort on Sunday night and drove around the country side finding several young couples on their courting date and several males driving home alone from the singing!
Our new campground host told us to drive around and see what is in the area, but on Tuesday she was off and the gate was locked so if you leave and aren’t back by 6 you will be locked out of the camp. Of course, the solution was to “rent” a key fob that tells the gate you are not a robber and lets you in..Problem solved! So, Tuesday we took off for Coastal Ohio which is in Northern Ohio , Lake Erie and Southern Ohio is the OHIO RIVER! We. drove all types of back roads and must have crossed 20 different railroad crossings.
As the photos show there were some nice lakeside parks, ships unloading, underground railroad houses and a ton of wine tasting venues! Unfortunately for Debbie, most of the wine tasting was closed due to COVID- 19 which is quickly finding its way into our trip!
Wednesday we took off further East to the Pennsylvania border and lake Pymatuning which is shared by both states. We have a membership affiliation with a campground here so we drove around the lake looking for the Travel Resorts sign. All the GPS information continued to direct us to this new KOA park so finally we drove up and asked. It turns out that the Park, which is nice and had lots of entertainment venues, was hit so hard by COVID that it joined forces with KOA to form a combination public/membership hybrid. After exploring a bit, we decided to drive South to see if we could find a SAMS club in Warren Ohio.
Thursday, we started our search for all the covered bridges this area is known for! There are more covered bridges in this part of Ohio, than in the rest of the entire state. The Shortest, the longest, 0ne lane, wood, steel, combination of both , this is where you are going to find them!
Friday and Saturday,  we continued driving around looking for little “covered Bridge” signs with arrows that took us into all kinds of quaint tiny forgotten towns and burgs. We discovered the local Hardies had resumed indoor dining and we availed ourselves of some treats that almost tasted like the offerings back home at our Lillian Alabama store. We finally did  take a drive back into Ashtabula and were amazed at how quick we got there following the directions, instead of taking every back-road crossing railroad tracks 20x .
Sunday, we found Harpersville and claimed it was founded by Geno and his ancestors in the late 1700s but here we also found the history of the covered bridge here that was rebuilt at least twice after massive flooding. We got back in time for a daily bike ride, Debbie walked Cody and Jake but we decided to cook indoors! The many wineries will have to wait for another NON COVID visit!
We knew we had a difficult drive over the Appalachian Mountains to Gettysburg on Monday, so we began to put away our rain-soaked gear, ( I hadn’t mentioned that it rained all but one day)! The drive to Gettysburg would take almost 7 hours, and the estimated Pa Turnpike toll would be $87, dragging the car behind the motorhome so we decided early to bed, early to rise! Monday will start at 5 AM!
It was fun to learn about this little corner of Ohio, generally speaking its missing a lot of the manufacturing that once took place here, you can tell that by all the railroad tracks. Areas of wine growth are evident all along the first 10-15 miles from the “coast”. This part of Ohio supported the Civil war with monuments and names suggesting that connection and people seem just as willing to be Pittsburgh as Cleveland fans!  I’m glad COVID sent us here this year except I had the exact restaurant picked out where I was going to take Deb for her birthday dinner but a search of every street and side street of Jefferson resulted in no Italian places for her birthday dinner so we will do that in Gettysburg.
Next blog will be from Pennsylvania:

Comments

Joan
2020-08-04

This was a nice trip thru Ohio. There are a lot of things that people don’t realize to see here. Back when we started camping, Mike you remember, that we took the kids to a lot of state parks in Ohio. We took them to Pymatuning back then state park.

2025-02-15

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