Road Trips and Hike Reports

The weather forecast was positively dreadful for the weekend.  We decided in the middle of the week that we would embrace the bad weather by choosing something that didn’t rely on good weather.  So I redeemed some Hyatt points for a 1 night stay at the Hyatt Regency Columbus and we stated Friday night on the way at a casino in Salamanca NY . The casino night was fun but ran late.  The drive went pretty well despite Ohio’s larger than average number of dorky passing lane hogs.  Even 15 years ago when I would go to Ohio with Drew (who is from Ohio) it always seemed like people were on sedatives there.  They have big freeways though with 3 lanes or more each way even in rural areas so that helped.  I was surprised to see signs for Mansfield on the way.  Mansfield is home of the catchily named ‘North Central Ohio Industrial Museum’ which came on my radar as a possible stop on a trip to or from Indiana I hope to make at some point.  So we diverted to go see it.  I was surprised that the In

This is a park we hadn't been to since   May of 2020 .  When we went that one other time, we tried to follow the Alltrails map for the loop hike it detailed. This park has a VERY dense network of trails.  A lot of areas are nearly braided with paths branching off every few hundred feet.  This made trying to follow in the exact footsteps of whoever posted the trail to Alltrails very annoying and arbitrary feeling.  There were also a ton of people there. It was actually spurting a few flakes of snow on the way to the park and along the hike.  There were about 4 cars in the parking lot when we arrived around 11 am and I was surprised to see we were the only one left by the time we finished our little walk.  I used Alltrails but mostly just for the map, not trying to exactly follow the route.  I also focused on a different section of the park than I did in 2020 and it felt very different. There were more hills and the trail we spent the most time on (marked S6 I think) meandered all ov

Sunday morning Brian and I headed off for a truly outstanding wood fired bagel at Fabrique de Bagel in Magog QC, about 15 miles north of our B&B.  This wood fired very fancy seeming bakery isn't in stylish downtown Montreal or Quebec or even in an upscale suburb. It's on the side of a provincial route in a rural area not ever close to any city bigger than maybe 10K people.  My breakfast sandwich was on a light crispy little roll which they called an English Muffin but didn't in nay way (other than being round) resemble what I would call an English Muffin. No matter, it was astonishingly packed with flavor from the thinly sliced ham, sharp cheddar cheese, delicate egg and a smear of Dijon mustard.  I'm pretty sure my eyes rolled back in my eyes while I was savoring it. We then headed to Coaticook Gorge.  I learned from Brian's family the Coaticook isn't pronounced like 'coat-eh-cook' at all.  Apparently it's more like 'Quitacook' which se