Harvest Hosts offers two levels of membership.  The basic level gives you over a thousand wineries, farms, orchards, museums and breweries that will allow you to stay on their properties overnight for free, in exchange for you spending money ($20 is recommended) at their business.  The higher membership level adds dozens of golf courses to that list.  As an avid golfer, I wanted to try this option on my trip home from Ohio.

The Harvest Host app showed three golf courses in the vicinity of Erie, PA, which I knew to be about a six hour drive from Cincinnati (about my limit).  I called each of them last night in order to reserve a spot for tonight; my first call was answered by an employee who had no idea what a Harvest Host was (despite the course being listed on the app); the second declined my stay because here I am an “out-of-stater” and thus a Covid-19 risk; and the third is where I am tonight, Mound Grove Golf Course in Waterford, PA.

That’s my hat and Diet Coke you see in the foreground; after checking in I was informed that there were leagues scheduled to tee off until 5:30, at which time I could play.  So I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich wrap and fries for supper and ate before my tee time.

The course is an interesting layout with narrow fairways doglegging through the woods and over the hills here in western Pennsylvania.  I found it to be in okay shape and a great value at $30 plus cart.  I asked a number of employees (all of whom were super friendly and helpful) to identify for me the “signature hole” on the course, the one most scenic hole which would usually be featured in any advertising or promotional material for the golf course; they each recommended hole #4.  To my disappointment, I found hole #4 to be a rather pedestrian par three with a small, stagnant pond on the right side.  Therefore I did not photograph this hole; the most scenic views on the course that I could find appear below:

Not an especially scenic course, but not an eyesore, either.  The Little Guy is parked in a cornfield beside the clubhouse/restaurant/pro shop, on the other side of the road from the course itself.  The spot is amazingly level and pastorally scenic in its own right, with rows of corn waving on three sides.

The plan is to leave tomorrow and stay at an RV park and marina outside of Albany, NY so I can dump the tanks before I go home.  I had originally planned to change up the scenery and go home via a southern route through Pennsylvania, but upon examination of the map decided that it kept me too far south for too long, thus adding hours, and maybe even an extra day, to the trip.  Then I decided I would instead take a southern New York route, riding I-86 to Binghamton, I-88 up to Albany, and thence home via I-90 across Massachusetts to I-95 in Maine.  But even that seemed to traverse New York State north and south to an excessive and time-wasting zigzagging degree.  So, I have decided to just retrace my route out, staying on I-90 all the way east across NY to Albany; I’ll stay there tomorrow night and then be home the next day.  I will attempt to update this Blog from Albany.