Frankfort Mineral Springs Falls

Less than a ten-minute walk off of Pennsylvania State Route 18 in Beaver County is a remarkably beautiful and secluded waterfall that, while currently part of Raccoon Creek State Park, was the focal point of the Frankfort House Hotel and Resort, which enjoyed a heyday from the mid-1800s until it burned down in 1920. The falls, its grotto, and ruins from the hotel are all highlights of a one-mile loop hike.

The water here is enriched with iron, leaving unique orange streaks on the walls of the grottos. On a hot, humid July day, there was little water coming from the spring and over the falls, but the trickle of a stream confirmed we found the right location and as we emerged from our hike the most pronounced ruins were evident. Some have even constructed cairns from the stone of the ruined foundations. While Raccoon Creek State Park boasts many great things to do and see, this one isn’t to be missed.

 

Cotton Candy High

There isn’t much better or more important in life than having awesome friends. I can’t say I bring a strong numbers game in this area, but I think I bring a strong quality game. So the weekend before last, my best friend from college, Jenn, along with her sister Amanda, picked me up from my place in Morgantown and took me home to Beaver County, Pennsylvania with them (both of them now live in Maryland, sort of flanking the greater DC area to the north and east, respectively). It did not take long to end up in the middle of a musical, fantasies about the upcoming midnight snacks at Sheetz, and what has come to be “normal girl stuff” for us. Frankly, I was aiming for a laid back weekend with my second family and best friend. That’s it. And it was good.

All morning on Saturday we ran errands around Beaver County. I had previously only known one way to get from Beaver Falls, which is down by the river, up to the rest of the county. I learned at least two other ways. When Jenn and I finally had a break, we decided to head to Brady’s Run Regional Park for a break. We had intended to find a geocache or two (this cache has so many of them!) but when we couldn’t figure out how to get to the first one, we settled for playing on some decrepit playground equipment and a stroll to the dam on the small impoundment. Afterward, we made it a priority to stop by the Chippewa location of the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe for their chili cheese fries and hot dog. Even though we were going to a Pirates game later, PNC Park has so much more to offer other than just hot dogs so we felt we were still striking a very good, reasonable balance.

Later on all of Jenn’s sisters, mother, and myself joined up in Beaver. Despite visiting Jenn’s folks in Chippewa several times over the past several years and just, generally, being in the area I had never been to central Beaver so I was really surprised to see how nice and developed their central business district is. The Starbucks proved to be popular with our whole group, but I also managed to pick up a souvenir for my husband here at a really neat shop Jenn’s mom suggested we visit. There is a rooster on his family crest so he really likes them, the first thing I spotted when I walked in was not one but three large rooster cookie jars. Done. The only thing left was figuring out how to fit five women and a large glass rooster into Jenn’s Nissan Versa Note. Don’t worry. We made it work, with no help from my constant joking around.

This fountain is dedicated to all of the children in Beaver

I was just excited. I was going to a ball game. I hadn’t been to a ball game since the last time Jenn handed me a ticket and said “we’re going to a Pirate’s game!” To clarify, that was our senior year of college and it was the party favor at our spring formal dance (which Jenn basically single-handedly organized, she was a very good person to know on campus).

PNC Park is a wonderful place. Compared to similar venues I’ve visited it seems cleaner, easier to navigate, offers more food choices, and is just nicer. After establishing where our seats were, Jenn and I very urgently acquired pierogies that were just smothered in butter and sour cream. It was amazing. This is exactly why it was completely fine to have hot dogs earlier, because you can get pierogies at PNC Park! But for as good as the food was and as much as the pierogie races still rock my world (Saurkraut Sal won, just in case anyone was wondering), the Pirates lost to the Cubs. I was not too bothered by the end of the game, for a losing game it seemed to go on forever and Jenn’s youngest sister and I had just gobbled up a very large bag of cotton candy which was artificially propping up my deliriously tired self for the impending Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

I was super pumped about the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert after the game and it was clear a lot of other people were too. Despite the game running long, the park remained packed. I know the venue isn’t exactly what they’re used to playing so I didn’t have the highest hopes about sound quality or being able to see them from right field, but I still had a ridiculously good time watching them. Though good grief, time has not treated most of them as kindly as it has to the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and the like. Most of the band members actually did look like reanimated corpses of Robert E. Lee (it has actually been brought to my attention that many of the band members attended a Lee High School) that could really tear it up on a guitar. It was also pretty amazing to be in a situation where it was totally appropriate to yell “Freebird!” and in fact even expect that if you did it enough you might actually get what you asked for. I was also extremely impressed with the duration of the concert, it wasn’t three songs and gone it was a legitimate concert. This is a band, in partnership with PNC Park, who were committed to providing a great fan experience and that sometimes seems so rare!

Jenn’s dad is a pro at PNC Park and once everything was over, guided us out of the park so quickly and even as we got out onto the streets the situation seemed intense but well-controlled. Jenn’s dad also works in this part of Pittsburgh so he had the best parking advice, the garage we chose has an exit that effectively puts you directly onto the HOV lanes of I-279, and with a carload of us we definitely qualified. Traffic was truly a non-issue and we hit the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Cranberry to go over to Beaver before I knew it, though part of that may have been my inability to keep my eyes open. The cotton candy had worn off.

Fourth of July, Family, and Friends

The beginning of July marks a lot of important things in my life. July 1 and July 4 each memorialize the founding of the two countries I proudly call my home (Canada and the United States, respectively). July 3 is my wedding anniversary. July 6 is my mother’s birthday. The latter is difficult to celebrate due to 2700 intervening miles, but it is still worth noting. Because of the first two items mentioned, it also guarantees at least one long weekend. So on July 4^th, we hit the road. We decided to be spontaneous and follow our geocaching Most Wanted list. We identified the nearest cache to us and made that our starting point.

The first stop of the day would be Caterpillar Tracks near Stoystown, PA. This is a tank cache. Tank caches can be some of the trickiest to find because there are seemingly infinite places to hide a geocache. Furthermore, lots of people who place tank caches love placing nanos or micros. Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire way to make finding a tank cache easy, but reading the description, hint, and past logs carefully can help. In the case of this specific tank cache, the key was to note the size of the container. Once I realized that it was a regular sized cache, I could rule out a lot of places (yay, wouldn’t have to stick my hand some place too gross!). But the lawn of an American Legion is a very appropriate place to be on July 4^th and we took in all of the military equipment they had outside for the public to look at. But, for what it’s worth, the most challenging tank cache I have ever encountered is on the grounds of the Pennsylvania Military Museum in Boalsburg, PA: Tanks Again.

Hey, look out behind you!

From Stoystown, I really was unsure if following from nearest cache to nearest cache on the list would shoot me toward Breezewood, PA or back west. To our surprise, it pointed us toward Ford City, north of Pittsburgh on the Allegheny River. This cache, generically titled Not another one-n-a-half, one-n-a-half, was not only a unique cache, but had a difficulty and terrain combination we had not yet found (difficulty of 4.5 out of 5 and terrain of 1 out of 5). A common challenge in the geocaching community is to find all 81 difficulty and terrain combinations. I’m not aggressively working on it, but I would eventually like to get there. Though the odds are pretty good it’ll take years to clear out all of the terrain level 5 difficulty combinations. That’s not how I like to play, though others love doing those ones almost exclusively.

Getting a better sense of the trajectory we would take, I called up my best friend from college, Jenn. To let her know we were on our way to Harmony and Zelienople, which wasn’t really all that far from her parent’s home in Beaver County, PA. She invited us to her parent’s house to celebrate the 4^th, just to let them know when we had a more solid idea of when we would arrive. 

From Ford City, we drove the scenic back roads to Harmony. Harmony is where the Harmony Society, a religious order that escaped persecution from the Lutherans in Germany first established themselves in the United States. One of the remaining historical sites related to their lives in Harmony, which is now little more than a quiet exit off of I-79, is the cemetery. Their cemetery is unique. There are no headstones. The cemetery is just a rectangle of land with a perimeter marked by a thick stone wall. Entry to the cemetery is through a heavy stone door beneath an arch. When we arrived we thought about entering, but standing at the entrance and peering through the entrance, we felt like we ought to let the spirits rest. Like the name of the geocache that brought us here, don’t wake the dead.

Gateway into the Harmony Society cemetery

We love the small towns in Pennsylvania. Even the hardworking, unremarkable places that have little more to say for them that they’re “a great place to grow up” seem well-maintained and pleasant to pass through. I often wonder why similar towns in West Virginia can’t seem so nice. Leaving Zelienople we had to wait for a train to cross the road. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine how the town must have been a century earlier. On the road out of town we slowly edged past the train that was taking a more direct route than the road that wound around and above the tracks. The drive to Beaver Falls and past to Jenn’s parent’s home was nothing short of relaxing, before we knew it we were pulling in the driveway.

Jenn is one of those friends who is amazing to see every day (we lived together in college), yet if we don’t see each other for months it is like no time has passed the next time we do see each other. Chris and I also love her parents and siblings. We couldn’t imagine a more pleasant end to our 4^th of July than with such a wonderful family.