Our first night of wilderness camping at Ryerson State Park in Pennsylvania. This put us within striking distance of the Shenandoah National Park.

I made a mental note to get out of bed at 6:30 am. I woke up, checked my watch, and was pleased to see I had another 45 minutes to pry open my eyes. Just then, Wanda announced that we were running late. I forgot to change my watch to Eastern time. I took crowbars to my eyes and quickly left my perfect-temperature cocoon. We drove off to Sugarcreek for our appointment at NuCamp. 

I like Sugarcreek and the surrounding area. The rolling verdant landscape is clean and prosperous. The towns are quaint with dozens of small handmade outdoor furniture workshops. Amish buggies clog the narrow highways with no shoulders, but they only add to the quaintness. Scores of Amish kids were out riding bikes to the nearest Amish school houses.

We dropped off V-Jer at the NuCamp Service Center at 8:30 am. I gave them a list of a half-dozen, mostly minor issues to address. The most serious issue was the back trim panel starting to come off. Austin, the head maintenance guy, remembered us from last Spring when we brought in V-Jer with its broken grey water tank. We also made some handy modifications at the time. He predicted that it would be finished a bit after noon.

The NuCamp factory, where V-Jer was born. 

We went to the town library to wait. The WiFi was lightning fast. I started my trip journal. Normally, I have my phone set to send unknown phone callers to some nebulous place in the Ethernet. Today, to make sure I didn’t miss the call from NuCamp, I turned that feature off. Sure enough, I got several sales calls in the library. I thought I had the ringer turned down, but each call was as loud as a police siren and tore the fabric of quiet in the room. Yikes, I was embarrassed. The NuCamp call came at noon.

Downtown Sugarcreek features a giant cuckoo clock and a couple of Swiss-looking buildings. The sign claims that the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes it as the largest cuckoo clock. We beg to differ. We saw a larger one in Germany.

Austin, the head repair mechanic.

It was after 1 pm by the time we were finally on the road towards our next destination, Ryerson State Park in Southwest Pennsylvania. The ride through Southestern Ohio and West Virginia was striking. The hills got steeper and the area became more rural. Best of all, the gas got cheaper. The portion of West Virginia that we drove through was a bit less prosperous than Ohio, but the countryside remained lovely.

We pulled into Ryerson State Park around 4 pm. Most state parks have an entrance office that you stop at to confirm your camping reservation. Not Ryerson. There wasn’t even a sign indicating that we had actually entered the park. We just sort of figured it out. There was only one tiny obscure sign pointing out a turn-off to reach the campground. We nearly missed it. Bottom line, Ryerson is a low-key state park. Still, the woods are gorgeous, the topography is rugged, the campground is decent, and the bathroom and showers are spectacularly clean and modern. Hardly anyone was at the campground, however, campsite #019 had a piece of paper with our name on it. We were expected.

Ryerson Park is extensive with several narrow rugged roads transversing the wilderness. The roads are poorly marked. The road to the campground had a tiny easily-missed sign pointing out the way. This was the biggest sign in the park. It pointed out the Polly Hill Campground, which was odd. Polly Hill wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the park website, the campground registration website, or any map. I have no idea where that name came from.

The showers at Ryerson State Park Campground were spotless and modern.

After setting up, we lit out for some hiking. We first tried the road and put in about 2 miles of steep rolling hills. Just before returning to camp, we stumbled onto Deer Trail, a mile loop of heavily wooded ravines. We applied our algorithm and figured we got nines miles of hiking in.

This outdoor theater was located near the campground. Apparently we were past the time of the year that the park showed movies.

The countryside along the road leading into the campground was lush green with steep rolling hills.

Deer Trail was a looping trail that we couldn't resist.

Our evening shower was heavenly. We had ZERO cell service. We turned in early.

Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum.

Dave and Wanda

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