Confluence Pumpkinfest 2014

Confluence Pumpkinfest

Jenn eventually made it home from her date. It lasted long enough and she seemed happy enough that we were confident it went well. Given that we’re over a month on and they’re still dating, we’re going to go with yes, things worked out pretty well. We knew she was going to come back because she wanted to join Chris and me for the Confluence Pumpkinfest.

We’d never been here before but had heard about the festival the week previous while we were at the Preston County Buckwheat Festival. Never ones to poo-poo a gyro, deep-fried snack foods, and other obesity-inducing snacks we were all in favor. Besides, we had been wanting to actually stop in and check out the town for some time, as until now it had just been a cute little bit of eye-candy on the back road to Somerset (which is part of the no-interstate route to State College from Morgantown).

Parking wasn’t too bad. We were able to park for free along the perimeter of a municipal park and walk about a quarter mile to the town square, which is where most of the vendors were. Unlike the Preston County Buckwheat Festival, which seemed very cohesive and had lots of signs pointing folks toward the different attractions, we had a difficult time way finding. Ultimately, we figured out where the vendors and the entertainment tent were, then accidentally came across a square dancing demonstration in the middle of a closed street.

The food vendors were top-notch. We were particularly inspired to come out because we heard they had a lamb vendor, Country Lane Lambs, who did lamb burgers but also had information on buying lamb products (e.g. ground lamb, which would go wonderfully with my homemade tzatziki sauce). My lamb burger was epic. Chris ended up at a different vendor where he ate one gyro and then had to return for another.

Though one thing seemed to be sorely lacking: there weren’t a lot of pumpkins around. Jenn was so disappointed. It turns out she’s got a pretty severe pumpkin addiction and she wasn’t getting her fix. After taking one more pass through the vendors she spotted a woman selling homemade pumpkin rolls, however. That was the ticket. She carried the log of deliciousness with pride.

But not being able to figure out when and where the rest of the festival was (if there even was more), we instead headed back to the car to find some geocaches along the National Road. On such a fine autumn day, there was nothing better.

We visited the Petersburg Toll House and saw the 16-mile long Youghiogheny Lake. Though it was the first weekend in October, the bite to the air in the Laurel Highlands was a hint of the cooler weather to come.

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.