A Week in Mentor, Ohio
Spending a Week in Mentor, Ohio | Driving from Mentor, OH to Allegheny National Forest, PA | June 2024
Curtis had a short assignment for work which brought us to Mentor, Ohio in mid June. It was our first time spending time in this area, so we were excited to experience somewhere new. Unfortunately, it happened to be during a major heatwave, so our time spent outdoors or exploring was pretty limited. On the other hand, it’s fortunate that this assignment happened during the heatwave, because it was hot pretty much everywhere around the US during this time, and having a job meant that we could be in air conditioning in the hotel rather than sweating it out in the van!
Besides it being hot, Curtis also had to work around 10 hours each day, so we didn’t have a lot of time to explore anyway. I tried to strategically plan Charlotte’s outdoor time with the cooler parts of the day, though she didn’t seem as bothered by it as I thought she would be. She particularly enjoyed napping in the sun, on the grass, right next to a road…and I just hoped that the people driving by wouldn’t think I was making her do this! On one of our days here, there was a big thunderstorm that went through the area which knocked out the power for a few hours. Other than that, our week wasn’t too eventful. We stayed at a Hampton Inn & Suites which was at limited capacity because of remodeling, but it still had a great free breakfast and a comfy room.
While we were there, we went out to eat a few times with Curtis’ coworker, his wife, and another guy who works at the power plant. Since they were all local to the area, they recommended some good places to eat. The first night, we went for pizza at The Wild Goose in Willoughby (they had some pretty interesting toppings, like one with pickles on top…). The town of Willoughby was pretty nice and walkable with a lot of dining options, compared to Mentor which, unless it was one of the few restaurants near our hotel, we had to drive to get anywhere. The next night, we met at Red, White, & Brew, and enjoyed a burger & a walleye fish sandwich. On our final evening in Mentor, Curtis and I got sushi from Maki Mentor which was near our hotel, then met everyone (our dogs included) at the Fairport Harbor Creamery for ice cream and conversation, and watched the sunset behind the picturesque Fairport Harbor Lighthouse.
On Thursday morning, it was time to check out and begin what we thought would be 3 weeks of “vacation” before Curtis’ next assignment. It was still very hot, but today was supposed to be the end of the “extreme heat,” and we would also be making our way North and to higher elevation. We moved out of the hotel and back into the van, returned the rental car, then got on the road, heading East to Pennsylvania. Curtis had a virtual meeting later that morning, and we strategically planned to arrive at an Aldi just before it started so I could grocery shop while he was on the phone.
Our requirements for finding a place to sleep for tonight were: a place that would somehow be cooler, shaded, and maybe even next to a water source. We planned a route that would help us get a few new counties on the Northern Pennsylvania border (we hope to finish PA counties this year, and if Curtis’ current schedule holds up we might make it happen…but if you couldn’t tell from the wording of my last paragraph, things have a tendency to change). We drove to Warren, PA, then continued driving East on PA-59 into Allegheny National Forest. We took PA-321 South into the forest, and ended up finding a pullout off of a forest road that met our requirements of being shaded and right next to a creek! We didn’t have any cell signal, and we wouldn’t have been able to stay here more than one night because our solar wouldn’t have gotten any charge, but it worked out well for tonight. In honor of it being too hot to use the stove, I tried out a new dinner tonight which we’ll call an ‘adult lunchable’ — basically naan bread, tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and cold pepperoni, and it was a great success — since then, we’ve started heating it up a bit on the stove, and now we have pizza as a regular staple in our meal rotation!
We took a few walks with Charlotte on the forest road, and listened to the constant tweeting of what we can only guess were baby birds in a nest in a tree high above the van. We ran multiple fans, and managed to get a good night’s sleep here. And with that, what we’ll be calling our ‘summer vacation’ had begun — though we didn’t know at the time that we were about to have our plans change again. Stay tuned to find out if it was for better or worse! 😉
