Homeward Bound

Today is the day Alice and I drove home. But first! We went to two more attractions...

The first was the Coudersport Ice Mine. Here's a link to the wikipedia page about it. Basically it's a cave that forms icicles in the spring and summer but not in the fall and winter. Isn't that weird?

Me in front of the opening to the ice mine.

Alice is cold!

The ice mine opening. Look at this ice! In the middle of summer!

After that it was off to the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum:

Alice found Smokey the Bear in the parking lot.

Random pointing wooden figure and Alice.

Me in front of a wood carved man.

Train!

Alice rowing.

Creepy cutout guy.

Alice is in a train.

Alice sees things at the museum.

Me with birch beer. I'm not sure I like it.

Alice with birch beer. She is a fan.

I try my first fried pickle.

And then we went home! The end.

Friendcation Day 2

Today was day two of Alice and my Friendiversary Friendcation.

Chickens near our air bnb.

Cows near our air bnb.

The day started off with a drive to Rock City Park in Olean NY because it wasn't actually very far away and it looked interesting. Of course I had to pull over and run in place for a bit when I saw a sign saying "Johnson Run" since my last name is Johnson.

Me running near the "Johnson Run" sign.

On the way we stopped for breakfast and looked at the random sculptures nearby.

Bottle tree sculpture.

Me in front of another bottle tree sculpture.

Truck with monkey.

Random sculpture.

Alice in a monument.

Me with a knight.

Here's the park:

Monarch butterfly!

Alice in the park. 

Alice at the park.

I pretend to be a bear in a cave.

Alice walks on the trail.

I jump over a crack in the trail.

Cool mushroom.

Alice on the stairway in the nature park.

Bottle tree at the nature park.

Alice goes down some stairs.

This rock looks like a face. Can you see it?

Me hugging a bear statue.

Weird caterpillar.

Me in a cave.

Also? We totally saw bigfoot.

Me walking with bigfoot (the sculpture).

Alice and bigfoot (the sculpture). 

The next stop on our itinerary was Kinzua Bridge. This bridge was a giant 301-foot tall 2,052 foot long railroad trestle that spanned Kinzua Creek. Most of its structure collapsed during a tornado in July 2003. Then they turned it into a tourist attraction. Neither of us is a big fan of heights so walking to the broken off edge of this bridge was slightly terrifying.

Alice in the Kinzua Sky Walk Visitor Center.

The bridge.

Bridge again - isn't this frightening to think of walking along?

Alice and I in front of the bridge.

Alice and I on the bridge. You can see how windy it is by looking at Alice's hair.

Me on the bridge.

Alice walks on the glass floor of the bridge.

After our harrowing bridge adventure, we intentionally drove past some fancy mansions (no photos) on the way to our next destination – the Keystone Elk Country Alliance visitor center! Their website is here. They have 245 acres of land with plants favored by elk to attract them. We aimed to get there at dusk because that' the time of day when elk are most likely to be out and about. Lucky for us - we saw a whole bunch right up close!

I found an elk! An elk statue, that is...

Me and Alice in front of the elk statue.

Alice has elk antlers.

Elks are surprisingly tall.

Alice in front of the elk.

Elk.

Elk.

Elk.

Elk.

The elk are way in the back of this photo but I thought it was pretty anyway.

After looking at elk, we drove home and saw what I'm pretty sure was a bobcat. Then we looked at the sky some more and ate friendiversary cake!

Driving at night is so dark!

Our 20th Friendiversary unicorn cake.