An Ohiopyle Daytrip

As it tends to happen every year (or at least the two years we’ve been doing this), we wind up scrambling a bit for completions in the last month or two of the year. Really, I’d wanted to do this Achievement as a fall foliage trip in October, but we had a lot of other things going on, so it got pushed back a bit.

For those of you who don’t know, the past nine years, I’ve been participating in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo each November. I’m now also the Pittsburgh area Municipal Liaison, which means that I coordinate the events here in the city. The goal of the month is to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and 30th, and this leads to many, many coffeeshop trips. Because of this (and because my husband writes for a living), we decided to try to hit Ohiopyle for our Achievement, and also find a nice coffeeshop where we could get some work done.

Well, I have terrible internet skills, and the coffeeshop that I found was apparently seasonal, although I completely missed that note. We wound up getting no coffee, but spending a lot of time dancing on the banks of the Youghiogheny (you know you’re a true Yinzer when you can pronounce that river).

This is the sign that greets you in Ohiopyle, which I assure you is a bustling little town in the on-season!

And here is the lovely Youghiogheny River. This is a particularly pretty stretch, right down from the shops and lodges in town.

Looking into the other direction.

Here we are, standing on the rocks. This is after we finished our dance party.

We drove down to a different area of the river where the big waterfall is. There is kayaking available in season, but not around this section because of the waterfall.

And there it is, in all its majesty!

Ohiopyle (and all of the Donegal/Somerset area as well) are places that I keep in my ‘vacation home’ dreams. My family had a spot up here well before I was born, and we still come back to the area every two years for family reunions. Someday, I will have a nice little vacation home here, so we can get away and write and drink wine and let Lucy swim in the river!

And this is me looking out at the river, dreaming about our vacation home. I’m sure very few people have the same kind of love affair with rivers that I do, but I’m also sure you would understand if you went there. I promise!