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:
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.