Keep Your Snobbery to Yourself, Please

When I told people I was going to Ohio for a long weekend, a couple of them responded as if I’d said I was going to a party at Harvey Weinstein’s house.

“Why on earth are you going to Ohio?” they’d gasp, and Internet, it offended me. I have a great love of the Midwest – I was born in a tiny town in South Dakota, and still love to visit – and know from experience there are plenty of interesting things to do and see in the upper-middle section of the U.S.

It didn’t hurt that I’d be hanging out with one very special man (more about him later), as well as visiting a new-to-me National Park, seeing my favorite singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne play in a gorgeous old theater, and experiencing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in all its rebellious glory.

And if that wasn’t enough fun for one weekend, we also toured Amish Country (where I learned that there’s more than one way to make chicken and dumplings), ate kolache that were almost as good as my Grandma’s, and even happened upon the world-famous Pencil Sharpener Museum.

(Okay, maybe not world-famous, but definitely adorable.)

So take that, haters. It doesn’t pay to close your mind to something you know nothing about. Except maybe a party at Harvey Weinstein’s.

Columbus is the capital of Ohio, and we took a quick tour of the capital building.

Long live rock! (At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.)

Catching the fall colors at Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

We hiked to Brandywine Falls at Cuyahoga NP.

I was playing with shutter speed, and this was taken at 1/1500th of a second.

This was taken at 1/30th of a second. Which do you like better?

Gorgeous patterns in the rock walls at Cuyahoga.

Tenacious ferns lining those same rock walls.

And tenacious tree roots near Old Man’s Cave at Hocking Hills State Park.

A stand of trees at Cuyahoga. Ahh.

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