🌞 Beautiful sunny day! 🇺🇸 Happy Memorial Day! Shorts weather today. 🩳 Started the day of making scrambled eggs 🍳 & bacon 🥓 and enjoyed the outdoors! By 10:15 we were on the road for more adventures. Drove through the cute rustic town of Brownsville…all decorated with American Flags long both sides of the road. Tranquil view of the area as we crossed over the bridge as we drove up the Historical National Road through all these small towns. We took all the back roads throughout the countryside to avoid Pittsburg. Saw a lot of apple groves, hay & wheat fields and lots of cows, horses & sheep!

12:57 Crossed into West Virginia and entered Hancock City! And in a blink of our eyes 1:02pm we entered Ohio! Drove through the cute town of Lisbon and of course it has Civil War history! I’m getting a real history lesson that I can’t get excused from with my pink passes I had back in high school! 😂 Lots & lots of big plowed and planted fields as far as you could see. Dairy farms all over, rolled Hay across the fields and lots of oil rigs. Now it’s 2:20pm and its 88*!

3:00pm we reached Streetsboro, Ohio KOA. Checked in and got set up! Every site was decorated with an American Flag along with the drive into the park. They must of known my fascination with cannons because right behind our site was a cannon set up! Photo opportunity! We enjoyed BBQ ribs & potato salad for our holiday dinner sitting outside. Took a walk then sat and chatted with our neighbors for awhile and called it a night about midnight! A/C on tonight! Traveled 178 miles today

Tuesday, 5/30/2023 – It’s sunny at 5:30am!!!! 75* at 8am with a high of 86* 10:45am we headed out to explore. I was on a mission to find a 🌸Lilly Pulitzer store to go visit and we found one at Legacy Village! The biggest Lilly store I’ve ever seen! Both of us tried new releases on! They were the nicest group of ladies, gave us the big dressing room, gave us bottles of water and even wrote both of our names on the outside of the door! You all know how thrilled Tim was with this…he was a great sport and INSISTED I get 2 things that he really liked….so of course I did. Walked around the outdoor mall and found an LL Bean store and. Tim found a treasure there! We haven’t been in one since the big one in Portland, Maine. off to our next adventure!

As we entered Cuyahoga Valley National Park, we stopped at the Canal Exploration Center where we got our maps and saw the boarding station for the scenic railroad and the locks. We saw the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail where mules once walked as they towed heavy boats. We drove the scenic route but had many detours to get to the Boston Mill Visitor Center. We toured the exhibits and talked to the ranger for a long time. Unfortunately the railroad was not operational due to erosion. We then went to the Brandywine Falls trailhead to the falls. It was a 1.5-mile hike with a 160-foot elevation change. Beautiful area!

Off to Costco to fuel up – 75.137 gallons @ $3.429/gallon =$291.93 ⛽️ As we went inside we learned that Ohio is a state that doesn’t sell alcohol in stores, you have to go to a state liquor store soooo we’ll wait till we get to Michigan tomorrow to stock up! Stocked up water and essentials. We enjoyed a slice of pizza 🍕 since its been along time that we had pizza! Yum Back to the campground and did 2 loads of laundry @ $2.00/load for W/D. Prepared turkey meatballs & chicken salad for the week. Cleaned Ruby and packed up. KOA’s are a great place to hit that reset, stock up & fill up water etc BUT the most unlevel sites! 🤦🏻‍♀️ 😴 Good Night Campers….tomorrow is our big day… our first Harvest Host this trip! We traveled 87 miles today.

Brownsville ~ first settled in 1785 as the site of a trading post after the Revolutionary War. The trading post soon became a tavern and inn and was receiving emigrants heading west. The borough developed in the late 19th century as a railroad yard and coking(heating of coal in the absence of oxygen) center, with other industries related to the rise of steel in the Pittsburgh area. It reached a peak of population of more than 8,000 in 1940. Postwar development took place in suburbs, as was typical of the time. The restructuring of the railroad and steel industries caused a severe loss of jobs and population in Brownsville, beginning in the 1970s. The population of 2,331 as of the 2010 census.

Ohio – Known as the Buckeye State after its buckeye trees with an elevation of 850 ft

Lisbon was platted on February 16, 1803, elevation of 968 ft. The village was incorporated under a special act of legislature on February 7, 1825. Initially known for its iron and whiskey production! Lisbon has the distinction of being the northernmost western town involved in military actions during the Civil War. As of 2020 the population was only 2597.

Streetsboro KOA Cleveland – site 202 family owned KOA. I got to met the owners while I was doing laundry. She showed me all around the office/store and the game room introducing me to her family members. They own 2 other KOA’s in Virginia & Pennsylvania. The office/store is an 18th century building All the original hand hewn beams were still exposed in the game room ceiling.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park – that preserves and reclaims the rural landscape along the Cuyahoga River between Akron and Cleveland in Northeast Ohio. 32,572-acre. Cuyahoga Valley was originally designated as a National Recreation Area in 1974, then redesignated as a national park 26 years later in 2000, and remains the only national park that originated as a national recreation area.

Carved by Brandywine Creek, the 60-foot falls demonstrates classic geological features of waterfalls. A layer of hard rock caps the waterfall, protecting softer layers of rock below. In this case, the top layer is Berea Sandstone. The softer layers include Bedford and Cleveland shales, soft rocks formed from mud found on the sea floor that covered this area 350-400 million years ago. Shale is thinly chunked, giving water a bridal veil appearance as it cascades down the falls.

A combination of boardwalk and steps brings you into the waterfall’s gorge and lets you view the waterfall head-on. The boardwalk also provides a close look at Berea Sandstone. Berea Sandstone is high quality sandstone found commonly throughout this area, both in nature and as a construction material used in buildings and canal locks.

The moistness of the gorge is evident as you walk along boardwalk. The moisture invites moss to grow on the sandstone and eastern hemlocks, a type of evergreen tree, to grow along the gorge. The hemlocks contrast with the abundant red maple trees in the area, which flame with color in the fall.

Early settlers in the valley saw the falls, not just as an object of beauty, but as something to be used for its water power. In 1814, George Wallace built a saw mill at the top of the falls. Grist and woolen mills followed. The Village of Brandywine grew around the mills and became one of the earliest communities to emerge in the Cuyahoga Valley. Much of the village is now mostly gone, lost to the construction of nearby Interstate 271. However, the James Wallace house, built by George’s son, remains and is a bed & breakfast, the Inn at Brandywine Falls.