Virginia Kendal National Park, Ohio 2025- A Critical Review

Rays of warm sunshine beamed down on our happy hike through Virginia Kendal National Park, Ohio. On the ride back home, we drove past the site of last year’s Lavender festival. It was just about this same holiday weekend  last year & I was transported back to foggy memories of vendor tents hawking rock me baby coasters & peeper keepers, hand carved chopping blocks, hot sauces & a petting zoo w/ delicious goats, (not for sale). Soaps & cheeses, oils & tin foil hat conspiracy t-shirts abound. Prize games of corn hole w/ Bud Light bean bags & hip 20 something braless girls w/ sweet Mid-Western tit's, hand in hand w/ frizzed out purple hair young Grandmas clinging desperately to their last years of middle age. Bad tribal tattoos w/ tough guy attitudes mask a genuine kindness and unpretentious sincerity that lurks beneath shared macho facades. Inside the nearby souvenir shop, we find wine pairings w/ fridge magnets and wine glass lip gloss posters that say things like “let's drink wine & judge people”. Look there- it's a team of young women unironically wearing Trump world indictment champion trophies on their many-colored tank tops. Among all this charming Americana, there is a sudden stampede of Nordstroms plus size models stumbling around cheap bottles of Zinfandel like zombies chowing the last living brain on earth.  

And just like that, the memory faded & I return to the lingering joy of family & the mud on my boots from the rocky outlook back there at Virginia Kendal National Park, Ohio.

Virginia Kendal National Park, Ohio- *****5 Stars