Ohiopyle State Park, Pennsylvania

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Ohiopyle State Park, Pennsylvania

Postby Tom&Shelly » Sun Aug 21, 2022 8:00 pm

On our way to Fairborn Ohio, we stopped for a day in Ohiopyle in PA. We spent the day looking up some details of Shelly's ancestors who lived in Monessen PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh. We decided there was enough to do in the area, and in the park itself, that we altered our plans and returned there for four days last week.

Two campsites a few feet from each other. These had full electric and, like all of the sites in this park, were in the woods

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In the second site, I'd found the 20 amp circuit had an open ground, and so used the 30 amp circuit with an adapter. I reported the problem one afternoon, and the next morning the maintenance guy replaced the outlet. Good service!

Tested out our new toaster which works well, but you do have to remember to flip the toast (I like mine on the dark side anyway)

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In Monessen we found a small museum dedicated to the area, and a docent who spent a lot of time helping Shelly, and let me actually touch the telephone in their collection! (An AT&T 100 style set, with a round base, and F1 receiver. Someday I'll find one in an antique store and buy it.) Much more pleasant experience than certain art museums in Philadelphia that I could name.

We also spent a day at the Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History in downtown Pittsburgh. All in one building, you may as well see both because you couldn't see all of one without passing through galleries of the other. In keeping with our (new) tradition, we didn't have time for the 3rd floor, so will have to go back.

In Ohiopyle, there are a number of waterfalls and hikes to them

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Be a little wary of the trail names on the maps. Between the hiking map and the campsite map they don't always agree, and neither always agrees with the names on the trail signs. But other than a slight risk of getting lost and dying, totally worth the trouble! Actually, you could just park a few feet away from those falls, but we hiked a mile and a half from our campsite. Someday, we will park there and hike to the next falls upstream.

The area is so nice, we were thinking of buying a cottage around there. Looked at this one, but no sale!

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Stone floors on top of concrete with questionable steel reinforcement--over a stream--it's cold in the winter. Rooms are small, though the decking is adequately sized. (The architect calls that "compression and release", or some such nonsense.) Annual maintenance bills worth more than our cabin in New Mexico. Oh well!

(For those who seriously like Frank Lloyd Wright, Kentuck Knob is also up the road. Entrance fees to both are high, so we decided Falling Water was enough of that.)

But back before this area had Pittsburgh, or even Pennsylvania, it had Fort Necessity. This is where a little known Virginia militia officer met a small army of French and Indians, who defeated him, leaving no recourse but for the British and French Empires to fight the first world-wide war.

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Luckily for the future of our country, Leftenant Washington escaped using the slide!

No, this is the actual reconstructed fort here

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Shelly wondered what would have happened had Washington been killed. I suggest we (the US) would have remained part of the British Empire, which means we would have defeated Hitler at least two years sooner. But who knows. Totally idle speculation, but when in this area, it is interesting to remember the steel output of the US vastly exceeded that of the Ruhr region, perhaps one of the fundamental reasons (as Churchill pointed out) the allies won World War II.

Finally, in the very meadow Washington picked for the battle, I managed to dumb-luck onto a decent photo

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Tom
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Re: Ohiopyle State Park, Pennsylvania

Postby rjgimp » Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:09 pm

I'm in the middle of some research for an upcoming swing through IA, MO, AR, TN, KY, IN, IL, & WI and just discovered that PA is one of six states with no entrance fees to get into a state park. The others are HI, IA, MO, TN, and IL.
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Re: Ohiopyle State Park, Pennsylvania

Postby Tom&Shelly » Mon Aug 22, 2022 7:36 am

rjgimp wrote:I'm in the middle of some research for an upcoming swing through IA, MO, AR, TN, KY, IN, IL, & WI and just discovered that PA is one of six states with no entrance fees to get into a state park. The others are HI, IA, MO, TN, and IL.


I think there may also be some that include the entrance fee with the campsite fee, though I'm not sure since Shelly usually picks our site based on an intricate algorithm that depends on site photos (trees?, close to other sites?), bathroom and shower locations, shore power (if we may want our heater or AC), etc., etc. I play an important role: "Here's the card sweetheart!" It works for us.

I know Baxter charged the entrance fee in addition to a steep ($50/night) camping fee.

In New York, if you are camping at one state park, you have free day use at others.

Entrance fees at National Parks often seem to be free these days (Fort Necessity is; no camping there, of course.) (Makes sense--even George Washington had a miserable camping experience there!) Where they aren't free (Acadia, for example), they are free for veterans because we can get an "America the Beautiful" Military Pass for free.

That about sums up my limited knowledge. I should probably pay more attention and document our experience with fees on TNTTT. :thinking:

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Re: Ohiopyle State Park, Pennsylvania

Postby ParTaxer » Mon Aug 22, 2022 11:54 am

Kentucky has no charges for entering a state park.
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