We arrived on Friday, September 22, 2017. There was hardly anyone there. The park is beautiful and big, very big. In fact it is the largest state park in Ohio at over 17,000 acres! We set up and then drove around to see what was around. When we got back to the campsite, there were a lot more people and by nightfall the whole place was packed. I reminded myself and everyone else that if we can get through the weekenders the week will be great! I was a little disappointed though when we got here because they don’t have the biking trails that we thought they did, at least not easily accessible for us being that we have 4 bikes and 2 little tag-alongs. They also don’t have basketball courts anymore like the advertised. They had a quite a bit of vandalism at the park and got tired of replacing them, so they just took them down. But, on the plus side, we can take the dog on all of the trails!
Saturday we decided to walk the Stone House trail instead of parking at Stone House and seeing it. We decided not to take the dog and that was a good thing. We were half way to the house and the kids were in front of us walking and Kevin smacked his leg, then Sean smacked his and I got it too. We took off running with the kids and when we stopped we realized we had been stung, a couple of times each. We checked the kids over and while they didn’t have any stings, there were two stuck to Faith’s shoe. Thank goodness, but when she saw them she screamed (like she had gotten stung!). It took a little to get her calmed down to get them off of her shoe. Once we got to the house, it was closed. Yep, closed! It’s open Friday through Monday but not until 1pm. Well, now what, we weren’t walking back through the trail yet, so, Kevin and Sean walked (well, ran, jogged, etc.) the whole road back, which was 4 miles! They came and picked us up and headed back to the RV to attend to our wounds!
That afternoon we decided to go back to see the Stone House, but this time, in the truck! The house was neat, with clothes and such from that time period. The house sits on the lake which is beautiful, however, the lake was not there when they lived in the house. It is a man-made lake with a dam to prevent flooding. After that we decided to go get pizza at a highly rated place called Plus 1 Pizza in Cambridge, OH. It was super good and I would recommend it to anyone, we ordered and took it back home. We were supposed to make apple pie for dessert, but I didn’t have any sugar, so that’s another day’s activity.
Sunday we surprised the kids with a trip to a corn maze! They got to play in a corn box (instead of a sand box, which was much cleaner by the way), ride a tractor ride, have duck races and of course do the corn maze. We all had so much fun! After we got back home we just relaxed for a bit and then took Diesel for a walk. The girls helped me fix an apple pie with the apples that we picked from the orchard. It was awesome!
Monday we took it easy and did school and work (we still have to do that!). We rode our bikes down to the lake which I think we were almost all crying when we got home because the trip back from the lake was all uphill and its 90 degrees outside! We took Diesel for a walk before dinner and found a really nice loop that wasn’t busy that had a small playground. We were there for an hour, much longer than we expected, so we had a late dinner. We contemplated switching sites, but we couldn’t convince Kevin yet.
Tuesday Kevin had a big release so I took the kids down to the playground to do school work and play. Kevin was having issues and we were getting hot sitting in the sun at the playground. Sean went back to the RV and talked to Kevin and he gave the OK to go to the front office to request a different site. The park office let us switch, no problem. We’re here for 4 more days, this is a much better site now. The kids can play outside just steps away from the RV! Time for some fun!
Wednesday Sean took the kids to gem mining. They had a blast and told us all about it when they got back. I did laundry which Kyle helped me with and he did great! We hiked Hosak’s Cave which was supposed to be dangerous, but there were more trials at Hocking Hills that were worse! The kids did great and it was like 10 minutes long, lol… It rained that evening and a cold front came through, it was AWESOME!!!! A cold front in September!!!! Sean and I emptied the tanks that night and had to dodge deer and realized we really do need a deer whistle. Thanks to Bob for the suggestion!
Thursday we decided to take the kids to the nature center and from the pics you can see how busy they actually were. The guy that worked there seemed so excited to be there, but was probably just bored to death! We spent the afternoon by the fire cooking dinner, playing at the playground and packing up for the leave the next day.
All in all we really liked Salt Fork and would go back but not during stink bug season!
