Yesterday Bob and I drove 3.5 hours from Canton, Ohio, to State College, Pennsylvania, otherwise known as “Happy Valley,” home to Penn State University. It was a beautiful day for a drive and an outing once we got there.
as the Home of the Football Hall of Fame
In both Canton and State College, we stayed at Hyatt Place Hotels, a new hotel membership that Bob has gotten us to go along with the Marriott and Wyndham memberships. The Hyatt Place Hotel in State College has residences on top of the hotel, a good workout facility, great breakfast, and retail options on the ground level including Target, Planet Fitness Gym, and a restaurant. It is also very close to the Penn State campus, so we highly recommend it.
The lobby and check-in is one floor up.
This is the view of the Penn State football stadium from our room.
State College is one of 962 boroughs in Pennsylvania. Boroughs are smaller than cities, counties, and townships (they have both 1st class and 2nd class). State College is in Centre (how British!) County and has a population of a little over 40,000, making it the largest borough in Pennsylvania.
The Penn State mascot is the fictional Nittany Lion, named after a nearby mountain and originally coined in 1907 to seem fiercer than any other mascot at the time. Penn State competes in the Big 10 Conference, that currently has 18 schools, including Iowa and Wisconsin. So while we are unlikely to root for their sports teams, we were very impressed with their campus and the downtown area near campus.
arranged in natural geologic order.
That makes my anal heart very happy.
in the Old Main building until 1930
when chimes were installed to ring the hours on campus.
The restoration and this plaza were funded
by a gift from the class of 2009.
to be funded by a private donation.
Bethlehem Steel Founder and Penn State Trustee
Charles Schwab donated $150,000 for the building.
Penn State Trustee.
Side note: We drove 3.25 hours today to Newtown, PA, to begin our new housesit, and the first thing we saw when we walked in was a framed photo of our homeowners with this statue. The husband is a Penn State alum.
One of our favorite parts of the campus was The Arboretum at Penn State. Opened in 2009, it is now a hub for community events and a popular garden destination. It includes 10 acres of botanic gardens and 340 acres of fields and woodlands for hiking, biking, and observing wildlife. It also is the location for one of the university’s art museums, the Palmer Museum of Art. The art museum was closed yesterday for Juneteenth, but we loved walking around some of the grounds.
across the street from the main university campus
to a pretty building off campus
One of the sculptures along the sculpture walk by the art museum.
Since Penn State is a big university, there is a Graduate Hotel. We had to check it out even though we were staying elsewhere.
It was definitely one of our least favorite Graduate hotels
that we’ve visited.
We had a great walk through with the homeowners today before they left with their adult daughter to head to the JFK airport for their flight to Italy. More on this housesit to come.
Peckish Travels 