Cedar Point and Columbus Zoo News

Two huge Ohio attraction announcements occurred this week. Though details on both are sketchy at best I still can’t help feeling extremely excited for both. It’s an exciting time of year and a good era to be living in Ohio.

First, the Sandusky Register is reporting that world famous amusement park Cedar Point will be building a new, record breaking B&M wing roller coaster for next season. At a cost of $25 million, the new ride will be 170 feet tall and is being billed as the longest and fastest wing coaster in the world. The bad news is two attractions have to be removed to make room – Space Spiral and Disaster Transport. These are two rides which the entire family can enjoy together. I hope they add a series of new family friendly rides after the new coaster is built.

Visit the Amusement Authority blog to learn more and stay up-to-date on all the latest Cedar Point 2013 coaster developments.

The second surprising news is our first glimpse at what the new Safari Africa expansion at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is going to look like. The zoo recently released and overhead layout rendering of the expansion, will be north of the current North America and Polar Frontier regions.

This new addition is on top of the new Stingray Bay interactive touch pool exhibit being added to the zoo this summer. It’s been awhile since we’ve been out there so we’ll have to go back soon to see what the status is on both of these projects.

Visit the Zoo Tails blog to see the overhead artwork for Safari Africa 2014 Columbus Zoo expansion. Be sure to subscribe to the site and follow me on Twitter for the latest construction updates.

I don’t know about you but 2013 and 2014 can’t come soon enough.

Ricketts Glen: A Hidden Gem

My wife and I went on a driving tour around Pennsylvania this past weekend. One of the highlights was our stop at Ricketts Glen State Park (commonly misspelled as Rickets Glen). This scenic state park is located in northern PA, past the town of Benton. The Ricketts Glen state park address is: 695 State Route 487 Benton, PA 17814 (30 miles North of Bloomsburg) if you’re interested. The main reason for going is to see the twenty plus named waterfalls found inside of the park. We ended up hiking over seven miles on the Falls trail.

The tallest waterfall in the park, at nearly 100 feet, is Ganoga falls, which is pictured below. Although it was a hot summer day the cool breeze and mist radiating from the waterfalls combined with the shade created by the old growth forest kept the temperatures on the trail down and tolerable. Many hikers even took the opportunity to cool off by jumping in the river. For more pictures check out my Ricketts Glen slideshow video embedded below.

Ganoga Falls

There is a proper lake in the middle of the park which can be used for swimming or boating. Ricketts Glenn camping is offered as well as a number of cabins for rent on the grounds of the park itself. If you’re lucky you might even run into some of the local wildlife which inhabits Ricketts Glen state park. Notable species include black bear, river otter, bobcat, white-tailed deer, porcupine, turkey, and more! For more animal and wildlife pictures visit my Zoo Tails blog.

Pictured below is the 2012 Rickets Glen State Park map and Falls trail map.

Our original plans called for us to visit Worlds End state park too but it is even more north than Ricketts Glen. After hiking and climbing over seven miles we were pretty exhausted and decided to head right to our hotel outside of Bloomsburg. This turned out to be a great decision because shortly after checking in a giant thunderstorm rolled through the area with frightening lightning that knocked out the power at the hotel several times. Oh well, now we just have an excuse to go back sometime soon!

So What Are They Eating

I recently wrote a guest post over at But What Are they Eating - a really cool blog idea about ebooks where authors, instead of simply recapping or giving a description about their book, actually details some of the food that is eaten by the characters. This was a great fit for my short story because of all the unique morsels which are consumed throughout the adventure in China. Check out the post here.

My First ECard Creation

Name that movie.