Day 4 - Amusement parks to Beaches by Kenny & Kristen

The day started out early. We knew we had a fair bit of driving to do today so we were up and on the road at 5:15am making our way to somewhere up in New York that would put us close to Niagra falls. The drive was long but we found our first stop in the town of Altoona near Holidaysburg. What brought us here was a tiny amusement park called "Lakemont Park". It was awesome - a bit old as it was around since maybe 1902 - but it was a mom-and-pop type of amusement park. Complete with two roller coasters, Monster bumper boats, go karts and a water park. I wish the place was open to play around in but due to COVID they were one limited hours from 4pm-8pm. This would be a great day trip to explore - of course it would be fun- but the biggest kicker here is it is home to the oldest operating roller coaster in the world. yep - the *world*.  After stretching out legs we hit the road again for a couple hours before getting hungry. At which point we stopped on the town of Ridgeway Pennsylvania. It was a cute town and had a really neat little downtown with a few restaurants that were still open. So we grabbed some lunch at *Jordans Deli* and ate in the park of the courthouse. It was pretty tasty - Kristen got a Philly Cheesesteak and I got a Burger. The Cheesesteak didn't compare to what we had in actual Philly though. After lunch we hit the road for our almost last time this day. We were trying to make it ot the Allegheny National Forest to maybe do some hiking and also camp out. What we found though was even better. Deep into the forest is the Allegheny reservoir/river. And the Parks Service has a small beach area where you can go swimming right under the Rimrock Overlook.  So once we made it here we did the quick 1.3 mile hike to the top of Rimrock Overlook to get a full view of the river. Then we headed back down and took a swim to relax. What we weren't counting on is the fall weather to already start making its way in to the area. The high for today seemed to be in the mid 70's and the wind was blowing . The water was cooolld but we swam anyway and we did hit a patch of sun to help us warm back up. We hitched the hammock here and relaxed for a bit before making our final camping stop. The area was nice though, you can get a boat in the river or kayak as well. We made our way back to our home base for the evening and Chef Kristen made an awesome tortelini with chicken Marinara pasta for dinner with a side salad. While she cooked I read some Harry Potter to her and after we both got ready for bed to get our start early the next day.

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