The Gateway Lodge - Our Cooks Forest Adventure cont.

 

The Gateway Lodge - where we stayed.

 

 

This life size sculpture greets you as you enter the lodge grounds.

 

 

When you enter the rustic building, you first come to the office where you check in.  It's a quaint little area without a lot of room and is well separated from the main lodge guest area above.  There was always someone there wrapped in those huge soft chairs reading books.  Opposite the large windows of the two story room was where the wood burning fireplace crackled constantly.  This was an utterly gorgeous place that was well kept and highly maintained with the best you could ask for.  Wi-fi was available in this room only.  The rest of the lodge wasn't privy to Internet or cell phones.  Breakfast coffee and fruit was served there every morning for the early risers.

 

The lodge also had a very high class gourmet restaurant.  We had our breakfast of fruit, eggs over easy with a slice of whole grain, homemade bread, choice of apple sausage, again homemade, apple bacon, juice, coffee and homefries.  Breakfast came with our package.

 

For dinner it was dinner for two, with choice of entrees, a salad made of spouts, grass shoots, dandelion leaves, nasturtium flowers and green apples thinly sliced, covered with a lovely oil and cheese curd.  A tomato bisque laced with worcestershire sauce which gave it a wonder zing and a fried mushroom appetizer and apple crisp ala mode drizzled with caramel.  They also served a lovely wild mushroom soup that not only rivals Longwood Gardens, but passes it with flying colors!  My new favorite mushroom soup!

 

They were proud that all their food was organically grown and in season.

 

 

Down the hall from the guest main lodge was a hall way that housed a lovely billiards room seen below and a wonderful massage spa with products that are very lovely.  We also got them in our room.  The TV in the billiards room was the only TV and it was a nice one over the fireplace in that room.  Who wanted to watch TV anyway?

 

The rooms were just as rustic as the rest of the lodge, but each suite had a fireplace, whirlpool to ease those tired muscles as well as the usual shower.  It was a lovely room.  The whole place was 4*** all the way.

There are few places we've been that Bob made it known that he was planning on returning.  This is one he said that about over and over again.  It was a really great place to spend time.  This is my kind of camping.

Our Cook's Forest Adventure

 

For the first time in 10 years, we finally had some time off together and I used it making reservations to Cooks Forest.  We had first heard about this ancient forest, the only one in the US that is protected from logging and mineral depletion from a Harvard Professor at Longwood Gardens in March.

 

Since we arrived at the Lodge several hours early, we used the time with a hike through the old forest and to the tower to view the entire Allegheny forest.  We were there at a good time (autumn) and the day was beatuiful and sunny.  Perfect for taking pictures.  We stayed at a lovely century old lodge within walking distance of the Clarion River.  It was a beautiful area.

 

I've always been told that to have a healthy forest it must be managed and logged.  So much for the infinite knowlege of mankind.  In this ancient and beautiful forest, there was a place for life as well as death.  In death, these majestic beautiful trees were covered with moss and lichens.  In the crevice of this old dead trunk, a fern finds shelter and grows nicely.  Other dead trees littered the forest floor providing a place for moss, insects and tiny creatures and sometimes almost hidden by the masses of forest ferns that shared the floor with moss.

 

The eco system of this incredible place was unchallenged and left to be tended the way it was meant to be tended.  Not by human hand but by the Hand of God, and left in the care of Mother Nature.