Living Our Dream

Back to Ohio Amish Country

Berlin, OH - Events of Thursday, October 3 to Sunday, October 6, 2013

On Thursday, we left our comfy RV pad beside Lora and J. Michael's house in Pittsburgh and headed west to Ohio Amish Country in Berlin, OH. To say we love Berlin, OH would be an understatement. We love the rolling hills, the well-kept farms and the good food. We didn't get enough Amish Country when we stayed there for a month in June, so we decided to stop back before we headed south.

When we arrived at Scenic Hills RV Park shortly after noon, we discovered there was a SNAFU with our reservations. The people at Scenic Hills thought we were arriving Tuesday after the weekend instead of the Thursday before. Fall is a very busy time for tourism in Amish Country. Everyone seems to want to enjoy the fall scenery and harvest time in such a beautiful, rural area. Therefore, Berlin is always crowded, and Scenic Hills RV Park is always full on October weekends. Fortunately, someone had left the campground early, so they had a site for us. It wasn't the one we had reserved, but at least we had a site. On Friday, we would have to move, but they were able to shuffle some other reservations so we could move to the site we had originally reserved.

Scenic Hills has sites on three levels. We usually like to get a site on the lower level because there is a lumber mill next door to the campground. The noise from the mill isn't awful, especially since it shuts down at 3:30 or 4:00 in the afternoon and doesn't operate on weekends;  but the mill starts work at 6:00 a.m., and we think the noise is less on the lower level. When we made or reservations back in July, there were no vacancies in the lower level for as long as we wanted to stay (like we said, fall is very busy), so we reserved a site all the way at the far end of the top level.

The only sites available for Thursday night was one with full hookups on the middle level (all the regular sites at Scenic Hills have full hookups) or one with electric only in their overflow area. We opted for the full hookup site, mostly because we didn't think we could get Wi-Fi from the overflow site.

Our first site at Scenic Hills

View of some of the other sites on the middle level

The roads at Scenic Hills are tar and chips, and the pads are gravel. The middle level where our first site was located is all gravel, but the sites on the other two levels have grass between them. A little over half the sites at Scenic Hills are back-ins and the rest are pull-throughs. Although a few of the sites are a little close together, site spacing in general isn't too bad for a private campground.

Scenic Hills charges $35 a night with various discounts for stays of longer than 3 nights. Our nightly cost for 11 nights averaged out to a little over $28 a night.

Scenic Hills RV Park has no bathhouse, so all RVs must be fully self-contained; but they do have a laundry. Some sites have 30-amp electric, and some have 30/50 amps. There is free Wi-Fi that isn't super fast, but it is okay most of the time. It really slows down when the campground is full on weekends, especially in the late afternoon when everyone returns from their daily activities. In addition, although there are several transmitters throughout the campground, reception at some sites isn't very good, especially those at the far northern end of the lower level where we stayed part of the time when we were here in June. Berlin, OH is a Verizon 4G area, but the signal strength at the sites on the lower level is very low. We had zero to one bar when we stayed at the far end of the lower level back in June. Fortunately, we had two bars of 4G at our site this time on the middle level which enabled us to switch over to Verizon when the campground Wi-Fi slowed down in the afternoon.

We weren't sure when our site would be available on Friday morning, so we went ahead with our plans to go to Der Dutchman Restaurant in Walnut Creek for the breakfast buffet. It wasn't very busy on Friday, and they only had one buffet line open; but you can bet it was a lot more crowded on Saturday, in which case they had both lines open.

Breakfast buffet at Der Dutchman

Margery about to dig in

After breakfast, we made a quick stop right down the road from Der Dutchman at Walnut Creek Cheese for some cheese curds for snacks. Walnut Creek Cheese has meats, cheeses, home made ice cream, bulk foods and a few regular grocery items. After that, we swung by Winesburg Meats for some smoked sausage patties to grill for dinner that evening and for some beef snack sticks.

By the time we got back to Scenic Hills, our new site had been vacated, so we moved the motor home to the upper level.

Our second site at Scenic Hills

View of our row at Scenic Hills

At the far side of the upper level where our new site was located, we could barely hear the lumber mill. We also still had good Wi-Fi reception and a strong 4G signal so we could switch to Verizon when the campground Wi-Fi slowed down.

On Saturday, we headed to the Walmart in Millersburg to pick up some groceries. It rained off and on all day, and it rained fairly heavily in the evening for a total of 1.77 inches for the day. We spent Sunday relaxing around the motor home watching the NASCAR race.

We don't have much planned for our stay in Berlin except driving some back roads to enjoy the fall scenery (if it quits raining) and enjoying some of our favorite foods. We'll have another update in a few days, so stay tuned.

Mystic, CT to Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh, PA - Events of Monday, September 23 to Wednesday, October 2, 2013

We calculated the driving time from Mystic to Pittsburgh to be about 10 hours. We considered breaking the travel into three segments, but that would have meant leaving Mystic on Sunday in order to make the first of our doctor appointments.

We don't like to travel on Sunday in the first place, and we especially don't like to leave a campground when we don't have full hookups on a Sunday because of potential backups at the dump station. Therefore, we decided to make the 10-hour drive to Pittsburgh in only two days. We had three potential campgrounds scoped out in two locations. One location was around the half way mark and one was a little farther down the road so it would make a longer travel day the first day and a shorter one the second. We decided to play it by ear and decide where to stop while we were on the road depending on what kind of time we were making and on how we felt.

There was no line at the dump station when we left Mystic on Monday, so we were on the road before 9:00 a.m. Since we got an early start and since we didn't run into any major construction delays, we decided to press on to the more distant stop the first day. We pulled into the KOA in Bellefonte, PA around 3:30. We normally don't stay at KOAs, but the KOA seemed to have a possibility of more sites with better satellite reception than the other campground we had scoped out at the same exit. The other reason we opted for the KOA was several online reviews of the other campground also mentioned many of their sites weren't level. Since it was already a long travel day, we didn't want to spend extra time leveling.

The Bellefonte KOA is conveniently located right off I-80. That also means there is some noise from the interstate day and night, but it wasn't awful. The KOA has about 75 sites, about half of which are pull-throughs. There are a few tent sites with no hookups and a few sites with water and electric only, but most sites have full hookups. About half the sites have 30-amp electric and the rest have 30/50 amps. We didn't need 50 amps since it was cool, especially since 50 amps costs $5 extra, but the 50-amp pull-throughs were more level than those with 30, so we paid the extra $5. One reason we don't normally stay at KOAs is they tend to be high priced. We paid $45 for our site, and that was their lower, off-season rate.

Another reason we don't normally stay at KOAs is their sites tend to be very close together, and that certainly was the case here. On top of that, some of the sites have water hookups only at every other site, so you have to stretch your water hose under your rig to the pedestal next door for water.

The roads and pads at the KOA are gravel. There is some grass between the sites, but there are also a lot of bare spots. The next photo shows our site at the Bellefonte KOA.

Our site at the KOA

View down the road behind our site

We were on the road shortly after 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday. With a longer drive of a little over 6 hours the first day, our travel time including a fuel stop was less than 4 hours the second. We pulled into Lora and J. Michael's driveway and got the motor home set up on the RV pad beside their garage by early afternoon.

Lora and J. Michael's RV pad

Tuesday happened to be Paul's birthday, so that evening, Lora and J. Michael treated us to dinner at Texas Road House to celebrate. We all had the 6-ounce sirloin early bird special. The steaks were delicious as usual.

J. Michael, Lora, Margery and Paul

During the remainder of the week, we both had eye doctor appointments and we both met with former co-workers for lunch. During our time at the motor home, Margery caught up on laundry, and Paul did a few maintenance chores around the RV and around Lora and J. Michael's house.

On Sunday, we met our RV friends, Pat and Mike, at a restaurant called Max & Erma's for lunch. Mike had a stroke last spring while they were in Texas. After spending some time there for Mike's initial recovery, they returned to Pittsburgh, put their rig into storage and rented a small place where they could be more comfortable since they will be there over the winter. Mike is making good progress on his recovery, and both he and Pat are in good spirits. It was good to see both of them again.

Max & Erma's

Mike, Pat, Margery and Paul

On Monday and Tuesday, it was more appointments. On Wednesday, we took Paul's step mom to lunch at Empire Palace Chinese Restaurant. Empire Palace has a number of lunch specials for $6.50 to $10 that include your choice of soup or egg roll and fried or steamed rice in addition to your entree.

Empire Palace

Lora, Paul's step mom, Margery

Paul's step mom had pork lo mein, and the rest of us had General Tso's chicken. Everything was delish!

We both got good reports from all our doctor and dentist visits in Pittsburgh. After lots of hugs, we pulled out of Lora and J. Michael's driveway on Thursday morning and headed west to our next destination. We'll tell you where that was in our next post.