Day 36: Friday 30-Jul-1999
From: Zanesville, Ohio
To: Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
Distance: 340 mi (544 km)
We set the alarm on 5:30 but were slow getting up. Today we had plans to make a visit to a big basket factory nearby. We ate breakfast at the trailer and got ourselves ready. For Isabella that meant returning the big frog into the pond. Turns out that the small frog was gone. As the box had been closed, we suspect the large frog ate it. We did not leave the campground until 9am.
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| Izzy posing with the big frog, complete with a poison
ivy rash in her face and a black nail from Dayton on her left index finger She
did not kiss the frog (or we did not see it anyway). |
The Longaberger Homestead is one of a couple of attractions offered by Longaberger who are headquartered here. The Homestead is located along route 16 on the eastern outskirts of Frazeyburg. You can get there from I70, by taking 146 and short cutting over 586 onto 16 Eastbound. If you take 60 from Zanesville to 16 you'll have to drive west on 16. Zanesville was full of road construction when we visited so it was a bit quirky to get out. In Zane!
The place is very big. Big enough to have people waving you into the parking spots. They also have their manufacturing campus next door where you can take tours. We did not have time for that this time and instead walked into their mall area. On our way from the parking lot to the building we saw several people carrying baskets. Are they weaving those at home or what? No, they took them here to the "repair shop". We had the wrong expectations coming here. We had expected a very basic factory outlet for their basket products. Instead, they had plenty of interior products as well as clothes. BUT not very many baskets. Duh. We asked and we learned that you can only buy their baskets from their "consultants" in the field. The few baskets they sold were special models only available here.
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| Longaberger Homestead |
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| Karl, lost in a room full of bears. Would that make him
a Longaberger Basket case? |
We also visited their Barn area where you can make your own basket with the help of a master. Real hand craft. A shame my dad could not make it. We are sure he would have liked to make one. We ate lunch there, even though it was a bit early. We then headed out on the road again. We had planned to stop at Penn Wood, which is the campground we used on our first night of this big vacation. But we were not sure how far we could drive after the visit to Longaberger, in part because it gets very hot in the afternoon and in part because road there are a lot more backups by road constructions. So we used the map program and the GPS to look at a couple of different alternatives.
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| Another visitor to Longaberger making a basket with the
help of a master. |
In the end we drove by Limestone and headed for Bellefonte, PA, which is approximately in the middle of the state, along I80 (exit 23). That should hopefully make tomorrow's drive through the big hills in eastern PA a bit easier as we can do it earlier in the morning.
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| Erik taking a ride on a Fun Cycle at the Bellefonte
campground. Both Izzy and Erik were racing up and down on the lawn with these.
You steer by tilting your body sideways. |
It turned out to be quite a nice kampground. The only thing was that again our site was like on a hill. So when we tried to drive uphill, the rear of the trailer scraped the ground. So instead we drove around the loop and backed in; you're not supposed to do that ... but we did. We managed to get the trailer almost level. The kids found some fun bikes that they wanted to rent. Isabella and Erik had lots of fun with them. While Per and the kids went swimming Lillemor started dinner. That's went the neighboring Airstream couple came over. All excited seeing another Airstream. They have owned it for just 20 days! So for once we felt really experienced. They use to live in New Hampshire, but are now retired in Florida. We spent an hour talking to them. We also helped them to get their awning out (they had never had it out !) We exchanged E-mail addresses (they will not be back on-line until beginning of September) Maybe we will see them in the future at some Airstream gathering.
We finally ate dinner at 9:30. The kids took a shower and we went to bed late.