Summer 2020 COVID-19 Road Trip Begins

Welcome to our 2020 summer road trip. Christine will be hiking the CDT, Continental Divide Trail, starting in Pie Town, New Mexico and ending somewhere in Wyoming. I plan to hike about 900 miles by the end of August. Mike and Luna, Lunathevancorgi on Instagram, will be doing their own hiking as he works from the van.

After a CRAZY set of storms, resulting in loss of power and water for two days in PA, we got on the road to State College to visit Mike's parents.

Here is Luna on her first kayak ride at Stone Valley. Liz and Joe were kind enough to let us borrow their kayaks, and Luna had a blast. Then on to Pittsburgh where we caught up with my old college friends for dinner and were able to see their new restaurant in construction.

Yesterday we hit Campbell Hill, the high point in Ohio. It is located within the city of Bellefontaine, pronounced "Bellfountain" by the locals.

First known as Hogue's Hill, a misspelling of the name of the person who first deeded the land in 1830, Solomon Hoge. In 1898, the land was sold to Charles D. Campbell, in whose name Campbell Hill is now known and Campbell sold the hill and surrounding land to August Wagner, who was the original brewer of Augustiner and Gambrinus beers, sadly no longer in production. Then in 1950, the family deeded Campbell Hill to the government who stationed the 664th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron on the hill in 1951; this was made obsolete by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). Yet perhaps the oddest piece of Ohio high point history is that there was a petition brought to rename the area after former Alaska Governer Palin in attempt to satirize the Department of the Interior's decision to change the name of Alaska's Mount McKinley back to Denali.... crazy Ohio politics!

Of course it wouldn't be a road trip without brewery stops so here's our first. The people were incredibly lovely, dog friendly, and their cider was spot-on. I had a cherry vanilla one that was to die for. They also let us crash in their parking lot which was great because we rolled into town late.

Today we drove to Tawawa Park in Sidney, Ohio where we had good service to work. I can't believe that this was my last day of school... what a crazy way to end!

You can see that Luna loved her lunchtime walk on the Benjamin Trail that ran between the canal and the Great Miami River. The first picture in the blog is of our parking lot office!

Then it was off to the high point of Indiana. Not anywhere near as colorful a history as Ohio's. It's located on private land so it's awfully nice of the people to let us visit. Of course it's all farm country, being located in Wayne County which is about 90% corn and soybeans. In fact when we were listening to the radio we heard the soybean prices at least once an hour. Tomorrow we'll be in Olney with the white squirrels. Be sure to check back!