Ohio Visit Continued… (August 2011)

When you don’t have a garden to really appreciate going out to one, digging up your potatoes and then making dinner.  

Cheryl’s husband, David, digging up potatoes.

We all went out to the garden together…. to gather!  These potatoes had volunteered themselves from the year before.  We also gathered an armload of tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, and green peppers.  Then we sit down to this wonderful meal… all fresh from the garden.  Really, does it get any better than this?  I know, where are the photos.

And there’s the Fluff again.  What a marvelous cat.  Come on folks, he needs a new home.  He can’t go on the road with his peoples.  He is about six years old… well trained and understands so many words, plays… loves to rough house like a dog.  Would be a good pet for kids/teens.

O.K. the chair.  The other day David brings this chair down from the attic in pieces with a number of coats of paint on it.  He thought it might be oak and decided to strip it.  Turns out it may be black walnut or some other very nice wood.  He did a marvelous job of putting it back together.  I should have gotten some before photos.  Look at the cross pieces of the back of the chair.  And the curved cross piece on the front under the seat.  It is really a wonderful piece of furniture.

More beauty at Cheryl and David's.

Oh, and David and I took a bike ride on a converted railroad track trail – The Little Miami Scenic Trail.  We rode from Beatty, OH to Young’s Dairy. It has 140 miles of paved, well maintained multi-use recreational trails.  David said one day he rode it all the way to Cincinnati.  Wow!  I’m impressed.

Wonderful ride but my legs are terribly out of shape from all my computer work and sitting while driving.  I MUST do better. I could only do about four miles.  Again no photos.  

Then we went to Young’s Jersey Dairy for ice cream, forty flavors of homemade ice cream and gelato.  They also have miniature gold, two restaurants, heated driving range, batting cages, petting zoo, two gift shops, and a seasonal corn maze.  Just north of Yellow Springs on U.S. Route 68.

Leg cramps prevented me from riding the four miles back, so David road back alone and got the truck and came and picked me up. I felt like such a wimp.

There are a number of other local sites I hope to see before I leave, Clifton Gorge State Park, a historic house-Piatt Castles, Hartman rock garden… and I promise to take my camera.

Things I want to see before I leave OH:

Yellow Springs, OH – One of the “ten coolest small towns in America” - a unique experience, one of a kind shopping, dining, hiking, biking, exploring, art, theatre, cinema, music, etc.  A place were “unique” is the key work of the day.

Piatt Castles - Like the Mecoche division of the Shawnee people who occupied the land before them, the Piatts treasure the resources and the spirit of the valley they call home. In the 1820's, Judge Benjamin M. and Elizabeth Barnett Piatt moved their family from Cincinnati to the rolling hills of Logan County. Two of their children, Abram Sanders and Donn later built their own homes, Mac-A-Cheek and Mac-O-Chee in the country-side they knew as youths. These unique structures have become a private, family-owned museum that interprets over 200 years of history of the Ohio land and Ohio people.

Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve – a spectacular example of geological forces.  Limestone cliffs, waterfalls, rapids on the headwaters of the Little Miami state and national scenic river.

Hartman Rock-Garden –began as a modest concrete fish pond in H.G. Hartman’s back yard and is now revered as a folk art masterpiece.  And since I love rocks… how can I skip this?

Would love to see but won’t be here:

Barn Quilts of Champaign County – Oct. 8-9, 2011: designed to highlight the agricultural heritage of the county, as well as the important folk art of quilting, the Barn Quilt Tour brings artwork to the country and is sure to excite the farmer in you… me!