Just before Labor Day, Mrs. Neill jetted off to Nashville for a business trip to do whatever modern women do on their business trips. Lacking a better option, I took the kids camping, something of which I generally disapprove. If you’re “trying to get away from it all”, then I don’t see the point of sleeping several steps from a community salted with loud boozed rednecks up all hours of the night. But a weekday just before Labor Day? I was pretty sure we’d have the place to ourselves. And we did for about an hour. That is, until a gentleman and his three young daughters set up shop RIGHT NEXT TO US. After grilling the intruders at length, I learned that they were far from home (NYC!) and that they were half-way through a 120 mile bike-trek along the Great Allegheny Passage. (Which would explain why they didn’t have a car.) Before long, my kids were having a great time with our new neighbors.
For three days, we hung out with our new friends, biked (18 miles), hiked (jungle-like and with lots of waterfalls), and whitewater rafted (guess who did almost all the paddling for 4 hours) our way around Ohiopyle, PA. If camping was always that awesome (and mosquito free), I would live in a forest.
Sorry Paris, Ohiopyle was the highlight of my summer.
