As a pair of Anglophiles, my fiancee Courtney and I can barely contain our wonder as we walk into Ravenwood Castle. The New Plymouth bed and breakfast looks like it's right out of the English countryside — right down to the wooden drawbridge. The medieval theme sets the stage for one of the castle's biggest draws: board gaming.
Inside we marvel at its Great Hall and its vaulted wood-beam ceilings and suits of armor just as Zac Morgan, our innkeeper for the night, emerges from the Raven's Roost Pub downstairs.
As he shows us around the charming 1994-built gray cinder-block castle, he leads us down to the pub where he's been teaching a group of castle guests the rules of Snake Oil. While he takes his turn, he explains that the game is similar to Apples to Apples, but you try to convince fellow players to buy products you make up. He tries to sell everyone on the effectiveness of an exploding alarm clock to some moderate success.
With more than 200 games to choose from here, Courtney and I quickly drop off our bags in our room — the two-story King Arthur suite, which features a fireplace, a regal four-poster bed, a second-floor outdoor balcony and a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mural detailing the rise of King Arthur.
Once back at the pub, Morgan pours me a Left Hand Milk Stout as he regales us about the two annual gaming conventions Ravenwood hosts: Con in the Castle during the summer and Hoop and Stick Con in February. Both, he tells me, offer a weekend full of board games, role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons and guest appearances by game designers.
He then walks Courtney and I through a round of Survive — a board game about escaping an island imperiled by a volcano.
She wins, but her victory is short-lived, as I beat her in a giant game of chess outside the next morning before we head about 7 miles north into Hocking Hills State Park.
On Morgan's suggestion, we bypass popular spots such as Old Man's Cave and Cedar Falls for the Rock House, a 200-foot-long corridor that nature carved into a 150-foot-tall sandstone cliff surrounded by dense forest and hiking trails.
Before descending the human-carved stone stairs down to the Rock House, I summon a bit of bravery and wander close to the edge of the cliff to see the tips of pine trees come up to my belly.
Impressed with Morgan's advice, we take him up on another one: Millstone BBQ in Logan, about 13 miles east of the Rock House. As I sit down with the menu of Southern barbecue classics, a voice in my head silently thanks the innkeeper for his tip. I order a saucy slab of house-smoked baby back ribs that fall off the bone and are so juicy that I ask for more napkins before I even dig in.
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