Family vacation in Ohiopyle, PA

Dear Husband and I joined My Awesome Parents in Ohiopyle, PA, for a long weekend of vacation. We rented a house on the other side of Ohiopyle State Park from the town that the owner's grandfather built in the 20th century. He is in the process of renovating it, so not all the surfaces are finished, but it has a modern kitchen, 1.5 baths, a sizeable master bedroom, and two small bedrooms with bunkbeds. The stone patio on one side is nice with its string of lights , and when the wooden deck on the other is finished, there will be plenty of space close to all the touristy things to do, yet set in the countryside.

"How rural?" you might ask. The signs on either end of the little country road say "No GPS route." Google Maps pinged at the location of the house on the right side of the road but up a bank and behind a wall of trees; my father's pinged on the left side of the road for the mailbox, and after turning around, we finally found the long driveway.

Photos in the kitchen of the house and surroundings.

Unfinished drywall in the sunny extension of the living room that will one day have a back deck.

View from the hilltop above the house.

Alas, the trip did not have an auspicious start. I needed to go into work to cover my in-box and finish some patient-related paperwork, so DH started packing the car half an hour later than scheduled. On top of that, Google Maps had extended the anticipated drive time from 60 minutes to 90, so rather than converging for lunch together at noon, we weren't going to arrive until 1pm. As DH pulled out of the driveway, I texted my father, "If we don't have it packed, it must not be important!"--something we say in the family to assuage the anxiety of underpacking. After all, if you forget your toothbrush, almost anywhere you're going they will have a convenience store where you can buy a replacement.

Reader, it was important. When we finally arrived and I looked around for the bottle of water to wash down the granola bar I had just eaten to try to stop the sour stomach that was developing due to lunch being late...I realized that we had forgotten to put the red-sided cooler full of perishable food in the car. Worse, when we reached the neighbor who is looking after Rosamunda, she told us we had left the front door open! Thank goodness she was able to put all the food back in the fridge or freezer, and they have grocery stores in Ohiopyle.

First, though, we ate sandwiches from one of the establishments on the main drag, in the shade at the river's edge. Then we went for a short but increasingly difficult hike along the Youghiogheny River and through "a mature hemlock forest," per the state park guidebook, to Cucumber Falls. 

I'm not a fan of the phrase "it could be worse," because I think it cheapens whatever distress the person it experiencing, but in this case it could have been worse for us, as at one point we encountered ~40 Amish people pushing a baby buggy who hadn't counted on what started as an easy trail becoming rocks that needed to be scrambled over.

We ended up shopping in nearby Confluence, because MAP had left the chicken and teriyaki sauce in their fridge that was supposed to be for Friday dinner. We picked up a few provisions, walked around the little town and the bridge over the shallow but fast-moving Yough ("Yock"), and then enjoyed a nice meal at River's Edge Cafe / Bed & Breakfast, and 1890 Victorian house with a veranda for river/people watching.

When we got home there was time to start a "new" puzzle I had picked up from someone on my local "buy-nothing" group, a 1,000-piece puzzle of the National Parks. We did the edges and the lettering and very slowly worked along the grid lines and identifiable features (cacti, buffalo) before having to wait until daylight to work on the abstract pieces. It was really nice to contemplate these beautiful, and fantastically colored images. These are the parks represented:

North Cascades, Crater Lake, Sequoia, Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Death Valley, Bryce Canyon, Denali, Joshua Tree, Badlands, Zion, Yellowstone, Saguaro, Great Smoky Mountains, Glacier, Olympic, Shenandoah, Rocky Mountains, Pinnacles, Arches, Mount Rainier, Hawai'i Volcanoes, Everglades, and Acadia. 

I've been to 7 of them. How about you?

Click here for Day 2. Click here for Day 3.