More on our Northeastern trip

As promised, here is some more on our recent trip to the Northeast. We left on a Friday, and drove hard, with the goal of getting to West Virginia by early afternoon on Saturday. We made good time, which allowed for a couple stops on the way. This first picture is of the kids exploring a small cave near Nashville, Tennessee along the Harpeth River.




After staying overnight in Morehead, Kentucky, we were able to get to West Virginia by the next morning, and had a pleasant (if sometimes fog-shrouded) trip across the state. The fog eventually burned off, and we got a pretty good fall color sampling driving along the mountains.



Our destination was to visit some friends we made in Monticello who had moved the previous year to West Virginia. The Heitzmans have three kids just older than Kenny, and the gaggle of them played hard this afternoon. We had dinner with the Heitzmans, and then continued on to Pennsylvania.



After staying the night in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Hope and the kids dropped me off at State College, Pennsylvania, so I could join a field tour of fellow foresters looking at the timber of the state. Although cold, windy, and slightly snowy, we saw a lot of beautiful oak and cherry timber, and had a good get-together of forestry academics. Hope and the kids went to visit her folks in southern Michigan, including a visit with her Aunt Diane at a "pumpkin patch."



After kicking around in the woods of Pennsylvania for a few days, my field tour dropped us off at the Society of American Foresters' National Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, and Hope and the kids met me there. After a brief stay in Pittsburgh, we drove to western Massachusetts, where I had another meeting. Although we got rained on, the Mohawk Trail State Forest that we visited near Charlemont, Massachusetts was beautiful, and we promised ourselves to return someday. We then drove to the Milford, Pennsylvania area for my next meeting, which was held at Grey Towers. As I mentioned in my previous post, this site has a lot of historical significance for foresters. We stayed here for a few days, visiting some of the waterfalls along the Delaware River Gap National Recreation Area, and the kids got to go trick-or-treating in Milford.

After my meeting ended at Grey Towers, we headed back to Arkansas. We made a short stop at Cook Forest State Park in Pennsylvania, and I got to measure 170 and 180 foot tall eastern white pines with my laser height gun. We finally rolled into Monticello, and to our relief, the house was in good working condition. We traveled over 5000 miles on this trip to a part of the country we knew little about, and the kids were well behaved, making this an all-around great adventure.

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