Mohican State Park in Loudonville, Ohio..........a Quick Getaway for Two

We found a "deal" on a state park website..........One night at Mohican State Park, just under sixty miles from home............for one price.  We got a night in one of those fabulously soft and deeply-bedding king size beds,  a DVD movie of our choice to watch in our room, a bag of popcorn to pop in their microwave, AND dinner for two in their lovely candle-lit dining room overlooking a lake.  With the click of a mouse button, we had a reservation.

On Saturday morning we drove, via the Smucker's Store near Orville, down to Mohican.  The Smucker's Store is not a discount outlet for Smucker's, but is instead a place where you can see all the varieties of products that the Smucker's Company now produces.  Amazingly, many of them have never been seen in any of the grocery stores where I shop. I bought a jar of peanut butter bearing the Jif label, mixed already with honey.  How come I never see that on a shelf?  I also bought some Valentine's cake frosting that comes with little Valentine hearts to sprinkle over the cake.  We looked at all the types of Folgers coffees, Martha White mixes, and lots of expensive cooking gadgets before we left the barn-shaped store.  It's a fun place to wander around for awhile and they gave us a few samples of things that were yummy.

Once at Mohican we checked in, and felt as if we were in a ghost town. Granted, it was extremely cold, and we were there by one o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday, but we were the only ones there for quite awhile. The pool was vacant, but it seemed too cold on the outside to get wet on the inside.  No hot tub, either, so we just looked.

We had lunch in the dining room. I had an appetizer for my lunch, and it was a small pizza made with a thick cheese and sprinkled with balsamic vinegar sauce. Quite tasty.  Randy had a sandwich.  Our waitress was very polite, as we found with every staff person with whom we came into contact.

We spent part of the afternoon sitting in front of the fireplace, reading.  I had taken my own magazines and books, of course, but they have a free lending library or book swap location where you can feel free to leave books and take one in exchange, which I did. I left a pile of magazines behind for the next reader. I didn't take a book, either, as you know I have enough for all of mankind already......

We chose "The Lovely Bones" for our DVD flick, and they gave us a bag of microwave popcorn and pointed out the microwave for whenever we wanted to pop it.

Our dinner was not our favorite part of this weekend.  We ordered steaks, mine medium rare and Randy's well-done. They arrived in the same undercooked condition, still kicking on our plates. They were also swimming in some kind of gouda cheese sauce with onions: most unappealing.  There was a mountain of carmelized brussels sprouts on the side of each plate, also...........and one of them would have been enough.  We sent our steaks back for recooking, and when they reappeared, they had shrunk to half-size, and Randy's even arrived with a second baked potato plopped on one corner of the plate.  The gooey cheese did us in, and we both packed our dinners into take-home boxes...................but they never made it home.  We couldn't stand the smell of the brussel sprouts, and the grease from the steaks prohibited our eating them later.  Too bad, as the dining room atmosphere was peaceful and inviting.

The movie was so-so, but that's not their fault. I had to hide in the bathroom while Randy narrated part of the movie to me, as I got a little queasy and don't like closed-in feelings created by kidnapping movies. It was a fairly well-told tale, though, and we did have the popcorn to keep us busy while we watched it. I am a real hoot in a horror flick.................

Sleep was fabulous. Our bed was heavenly...........huge and soft and welcoming. It was nine A.M. before I opened my eyes to the sunlight streaming into our room from the lake view. What a lovely sight!

After a breakfast in the dining room where we watched others eat a buffet of pancakes, bacon, eggs, waffles, and so forth..............and I had my non-fat yogurt which I had brought from home, and Randy had eggs and toast................we dressed heavily and went for a very short walk around the lodge. 

We saw ice fishermen on the frozen lake, saw the pawprints of coyotes that had prowled around the lodge's trash cans as we slept, heard the howling wind through the treetops, and then hustled back inside the warm lodge before we packed up and left for home. Our bottled water had frozen in the car. It was freezing outside!

Mohican State Park was lovely in the dead of winter.  I am sure it is busier at the lodge during the summer months, but I am glad we were there during the starkness of cold. It just seems fitting to be out there in the chill, with the snow and the quiet. We do plan to go back, but we won't order the steak again.............

Home by Way of The Golden Lamb

We slept in.   The bed was huge and the comforter was comforting.  I could have stayed there all day, frankly, but Randy was up and ready to get going.  Darn.  We were in the car by 10 AM.

Now, a ride home is probably as exciting to a driver as a plane ride is to a frequent flyer. We drove from LaGrange, Kentucky to Akron, Ohio between the hours of 10 AM and 5 PM.  Obviously we stopped somewhere.

Lebanon, Ohio.  Small town.  But it was a good stop.  For me, it was the third time to have lunch at The Golden Lamb, but Randy's first. He told me he would have remembered it if he had been there before. My first time there, my mother, who was teaching Ohio History for awhile, surprised me with lunch on a trip to Alabama many years ago.

The Golden Lamb is the oldest hotel in Ohio, built in 1803, and actually opened in 1815 to the public.  It has 30 rooms which are still used as hotel rooms, and each one bears the name of a person from history who stayed in the hotel:  Mark Twain,  Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, to name a few.  It also has been the hotel of twelve US Presidents, most recently George W. Bush, in 2004.

There is even a hotel ghost who shows up once in awhile. Her name is Sarah, and her room is closed off except for a glass window that we could look into her room, just in case she showed up while we were there.  She didn't.

The menu shows all twelve of those Presidents, proudly, and tells the history of the hotel.  We ate a lovely lunch of chicken salad sandwich with fruit salad for me, and egg salad and the house soup of potato with ham and mushrooms for Randy.  They served rolls with apple butter that was made right there in Lebanon. (We moaned.)

The rest of the day was really uneventful, but the hour or so we spent at The Golden Lamb was worth mentioning. If you are near Dayton, or north of Cincy.......it's off I71 N just a mile or so.  History and charm.  We are talking about going there and staying in a room once used by a President.  You know we will post about it if that happens............!