John Bryan State Park, OH
July 5, 2021
John Bryan State Park
Here we are at site #25. It was shady in back for the deck, but sunny-ish in front, so we were able to get decent solar. Being that this was an electric site, we could have hooked up to power, but we are spending this summer learning what our solar capabilities are in various circumstances.
This site is pretty close to the neighboring site. There was an extended family next to us celebrating the 4th of July holiday weekend. They had 4 or 5 dogs, but they were amazingly quiet for the most part. We were surprised how generally quiet the campground was for a holiday weekend.
We were pretty cozy with the forest in this site.
I was kind of mesmerized by the many daddy long legs that patrolled the bush behind us. I guess I never really noticed them out in the actual wild before. I've mostly observed them on the inside walls of tents and such.
Bonus round--a black raspberry patch in the backyard!
Saturday was walking day along the Little Miami river.
This is the nice waterfall sitting area mentioned in the above map. We didn't actually sit here, but it would have been nice to.
More of the Little Miami
We winged a fig-blue cheese-proscuitto flatbread for dinner--and it turned out pretty good!
Sunday was bike riding day. This day was considerably warmer, and we were glad we did the hiking on Friday when it was in the upper 70s. In the morning, we headed to the small historic town of Clifton, just to the east of John Bryan SP.
An old mill
An old covered bridge
An old gas station
An old gas pump Anyone sense a theme?
View from inside the covered bridge
So the kind of weird thing about this place is that it seems that everything here exists for the main purpose of creating an over-the-top Christmas light display once a year. I think the only reason the above dead tree has not been cut down is because of all the lights permanently attached.
This is how it looks all lit up at Christmastime.
There wasn't much else to the little town of Clifton, although it appears as though at one time there was. This seems to be a pretty sizeable school, but it looks to be not in use anymore.
Every cultured town ought to have an opera house.
Not sure that bluegrass technically qualifies as "opera", though.
In the afternoon, we headed west of John Bryan SP to the town of Yellow Springs.
There's no hiding the fact that Yellow Springs is commonly known to be a hippy enclave. The tattoo establishment is front and center on the main drag in town. Although I guess tattoos are pretty mainstream these days.
Even the 5th and 6th graders are hippies here.
I have to say, I admire the quirkiness of the way many people painted and decorated their houses.
I wish I had gotten a closer picture of the toilet in the front yard, but I didn't want to look like a stalker.
Did I mention that this was a hippy town?
It looks like Yellow Springs got its start as a college town. Not sure what the deal was, but nobody has mowed or weeded most of the campus in a while. Maybe they let it go fallow in the summer? Is that a hippy thing?
There was a section of campus with a big tree swing that was mowed, though.
We happened upon the short but quaint 4th of July parade.
We took in some of the Little Miami bike trail that goes all the way down to Cincinnati.
(We didn't ride that far)
Back at camp, our neighbors had left their campsite for a few hours, leaving the busboy to do the cleanup.
Give him a bug racket and a beer, and he's happy! :)
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