Mt. Eaton weekend

We spent the last weekend in Mt. Eaton Ohio, visiting Bev. To Mt. Eaton is a 6.5 hour drive. Enroute Friday night we stayed in Morgantown WV, half way to Mt. Eaton, returning on Memorial Day.

First stop upon arrival was Lehman's Hardware. For all your non-electrical Amish needs. Then it was dinner, followed by the croquet tournament. We lost, we were playing against pros, who actually had a child in one hand, and the croquet mallet in the other.

Sunday we went to mass and checked out a few sites outside of town. We went to the Wilderness Center for a hike. It had a nice new interpretive center and several short hikes. We followed a trail that went around a pond with ducks, which we fed with corn, and a boardwalk that went over the lake where we fed the fish with cake cones.

This was folled by a trip to the birthplace of Rubbermaid, in Wooster. This included a trip the huge Everything Rubbermaid store.

Monday morning we watched the Memorial day parade pass through town. Lots of local participation, and the whole town went out to see it, all 264 people. Here is Bev's dad's 1935 Ford, it was neat to sit in. Then it was back on the road, this time along the northern route, through Pittsburgh (we went through twice by accident). Pittsburgh looked like a nice city. We did not see any mines or any indication of a steel industry, which I expected to see.



Good trip, good friends, and good weather.

They made me promise I would post this picture, against my will....

Going to Ohio

Some how we will be getting to Ohio this weekend, Memorial weekend, to visit Bev and her family.

new canoe

this looks like fun:

http://www.hammacher.com/publish/10343.asp

Skyline Caverns

Saturday we planned to go to Shenandoah National Park to go for a hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The weather was not inviting so on the way there we spent a little extra time at the Leesburg Outlet mall. But we did finally make it to the park's gate at Front Royal. Here we had our first contact with rural locals as we were getting lunch. Very friendly people. Anyway, because of the bad weather we decided not to hike in the woods, but go visit the Skyline Caverns. Here we went on a 1 hour guided tour underground to a depth of 260 feet. This was a lot of fun, and very interesting. It was difficult to take pictures down there - hard to capture scale and the lighting was odd.

But I did get a photo of the moss growing by the lights. As we progressed through the tour, the lights were turned on by the tour guide, and turned off behind us to manage this problem.





This was one of the underground 'lakes' called Mirror Lake. We see the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and their reflection in the pond below. Can you see this? The pond below was only 2 inches deep.



This is the feature of these caverns. These are Anthodite crystals. They only grow in total vacuums. So they only exist in one other known place on Earth, and in space. A large portion of these tunnels were sealed off in a vacuum until the caverns were discovered in 1937 by Dr. Walter S. Amos. When exploring deeper into the caverns he stuck his shovel in some mud and could not get it out. When a group of people pulled on the shovel it popped out, breaking the vacuum and sucking their hats off. Then they cleared the mud and the crystal formation ceased.

This long danglee Anthodite crystal is the largest known to exist, has been forming for thousands of years. It was a little bigger than a large pencil.

The other animals

Here are the other two animals we were house sitting for: Tenzin and the black rabbit. Tenzin was needy and made many demands. He is demanding me to understand his demands in this photo.

Posts have been scarce these days because my laptop finally kicked the bucket. Not that I wanted it too, there have just been signs and I am sure it will be happier now. I have to wait another week before a new one will arrive. Also we have not had Internet at home for a week. And we won't for at least another.

Don't worry, we will be OK.

Wash to Yale to OT to Yale to Wash

I drove to Ottawa on the weekend to pick up a few things. We drove to New Haven, Connecticut Friday night. I departed alone from there Saturday morning for Ottawa. Spent the night with some old friends - dinner, beer and Settlers of Catan.

I drove to Canada through the Adirondack State Park. Super nice and I had the roads to myself. The freeways I took south on the way back...... not so interesting. But I thought the Albany New York area was nice and the city looked to be a good size and had nice buildings. It is close to both New York and the Adirondack Park, so a good middle ground?

I quickly hit the road again Sunday morning with the car loaded up and big dreams. Made it back to Yale where I rejoined my traveling companion and collected one more, a friend in the country for a few days.

The drive along the east coast between New Haven and Washington included New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Baltimore. And many very cool enormous bridges (Del Mem Br, George Washington Bridge). We were amazed at how many rest stops there were along the way, and not one had a healthy food choice. Our only option was crap like Roy Rogers, Mcdonalds, Cinnabon. This is what is deemed acceptable as food. Though there was 1 Subway - which I consider a healthy option among those other guys.

I attached a web cam to the rearview mirror the car and set it to take a picture every 15 seconds from the Canadian border to Yale (via I-81, I-90, I-95). I put the pictures together into a movie. This is it. The first 2 min. are pretty washed out, the last 2 mins. are OK. As a whole, its pretty crappy. If only more road trips went by like this.