More Bloomin' Cacti

As we wander around Valle del Oro, we are seeing more and more cacti in bloom. This Barrel Cactus is one of two in our next door neighbor's front yard. The dark spiky things are last year's blooms/fruits. The whitish lumps with brownish spikes are actually buds for this year's blooms. And, of course, the yellow flowers -- that almost look fake! -- are the blooms that are open so far.

This is the other Barrel Cactus in their yard. The buds seem to be a little bit fatter and further along. I'll try to remember to get another picture in a few days...

It was an absolutely lovely morning this morning. I took my cup of coffee, my iPad and today's copy of the Arizona Republic that had been tossed in front of Auntie Violet, and sat outside enjoying the sunshine and the bird songs.

Our neighbor across the street was pacing back and forth while he was waiting for his buddies to pick him up for a golf game. While he waited, he raked his side yard, moved his and his wife's bicycles so that they were lined up together, then wiped down the hand rail on his porch. Finally, he chatted with me a bit until his buddies finally showed up. He is from Ohio. They are planning to leave on the 10th and head home via San Antonio and Atlanta! Guess we're not the only ones planning a direct route home.

Elkhart, Indiana -- 101 Degrees!

Oh, what a miserably hot day! We thought it was going to be cool and rainy -- a good traveling day as it was overcast this morning with an occasional drop of rain.

But, by the time we had everything packed up and put away and had the tanks dumped, the sky had cleared and it was beginning to get hot.We drove most of the way on Interstate 80/90 which is again a toll road in Ohio. ($14.75 to the Ohio Turnpike Commission) The corn and soybean fields were still quite green in Ohio, but the further west we drove, the more stressed they looked. Some of them really look dried out already...

I hope the price we paid for diesel today isn't an indication of what's going to be happening more as we go west. We paid  $3.959 a gallon today in Indiana; a full fifty cents more than we paid in New York just a week ago! And that's with the eight cents per gallon Pilot discount...

We drove back into Elkhart Campground (we were here last October) about 3:30 this afternoon. I debated whether to pay the extra $3 for a 50 amp site, but since we've been staying at 30 amp places the last couple of weeks, I decided to go ahead and splurge for the 50 amp. We're on the south side of the campground in a pull-through site. By the time I got the electric and water hooked up and Forry got the jack pads down, we were dripping wet. The thermometer read 101 degrees!

Thank goodness for 50 amps. We turned on BOTH air conditioners and just collapsed for a half hour or so. It's 10 PM and it's still 88 degrees outside.

We turned on the TV to watch the Mariners game a few minutes ago only to hear that Ichiro has been traded to the Yankees today! He's wearing a Yankee uniform for the game tonight!!! ;-(

Hocking Hills State Park

The main reason we came to this part of Ohio is because the fellow at the State Welcome Center told us that this area is one of the most beautiful in the state.  He highly recommended that we visit the Hocking Hills area. We had planned to do so earlier in the week, but the rain definitely changed our plans.  Today we woke to only a partly cloudy day and decided that if we were ever going to see it, we should go now. The scenic features of Hocking Hills State Park are carved in sandstone deposited over 350 million years ago in the warm shallow sea that covered the area.
The area was described in the New York Times as "Tucked into Ohio's southeast corner...a densely wooded region of rugged slopes and cool hollows, of spring-fed creeks and cascading waterfalls, known as the Hocking Hills."

We spent the afternoon hiking in the Old Man's Cave region of the state park, a deep gorge cut through the sandstone --

Our hike started at the Upper Falls --

Where the water eventually spilled into this calm pool at the bottom of the gorge --

Then on down a ways to the "Devil's Bathtub,"  where the water swirls into a deep hole in the sandstone --

There is some color left in the trees along the lip of the gorge above the recessed caves --

Then you come to Middle Falls.  As you can see the gorge continues to drop down through the sandstone.  That is a bridge across the top of the picture --

Here's Forry another rather strange bridge -- they call it an "A-frame" bridge, but it consists of various v-shaped concrete blocks in the water.  You step from one to the other --

And finally about a mile down the stream, you come to Lower Falls. (There is actually another falls three miles further downstream.)

This rock out-cropping is known as "The Sphinx," but the volunteer at the entrance told us she thought it looked more like an Indian chief.

We followed the stream all the way down to the bottom of the gorge.  But then we had to climb back out.  Fortunately, there were steps.  They were old and uneven, certainly not the standard eight inches.

And then we ran out of steps!  You get to climb this wooden tower and then walk to the left along a sandstone ledge (no handrails!) until you come to a long, dark tunnel of MORE steps --

The woods at the top of the gorge by the parking lot sure looked good to us!  It took us several hours, but it was a spectacular hike.  We were amazed by how full the parking lot was and how many people -- a lot of them kids on a school day -- were there.  One of the staff said that during the summer cars are parked all the way down the highway.

We drove through the rest of the State Park to the town of Logan where we ate a great dinner at the Old Dutch Restaurant before heading back to Auntie Violet in the dark.

Time For an Ark?

Forry and I lived the majority of our lives in the dry desert side of eastern Washington State.  Our average annual rainfall at our ranch is 7-9 inches per year.  We've had an education as we've traveled the last few years about what it is like to be in areas that might have that much rain in less then a week. Last night we had lightening and thunder all the way around us for several hours -- the sky was lit up in every direction.  It rained all night and has continued to rain all day today.

This is the gravel road just outside Auntie Violet --

The New York news broadcast tonight talked about the weather system "churning around" the Ohio River Valley.  I guess that is what we are experiencing, although our friend Tom said it has been raining for 36 hours where they are in Tennessee.  We had planned to visit the Hocking Hills area today, but didn't exactly want to do it in the heavy rain. Hopefully, it will be nicer tomorrow.

Ohio was also in the news all day today with the stories about the wild animal hunt near Zanesville.  A man who had many wild lions, tigers, bears, giraffes on his farm opened all the gates and fences, then shot himself. Because the animals were roaming all over, the sheriff and his deputies spent the night shooting to kill.  Schools were closed and everyone was urged to stay inside.  By tonight, it sounds like all the animals are dead or captured (mostly killed).  Evidently Ohio has no laws about who can own wild animals...

Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

As Westerners we know a great deal about the ruins and the culture of early peoples in the Southwest, but we don't hear much about the early cultures in the eastern part of our country.  The Hopewell Culture built intricate geometric mounds and earthworks throughout the Ohio river valleys more than two thousand years ago.  The Hopewell Culture National Historical Park covers five different areas of mounds.  The Park was established following World War I after Camp Sherman had been built right over the top of many of the mounds.

The Mound City group, along the Scioto River, consists of 23 mounds that cover the remains of ceremonial buildings.

The mounds were not living spaces, scientists think they were for ceremonial purposes.  Most of the artifacts recovered from the mounds have been from burial or cremation sites. Copper jewelry and ornaments, seashells and mica sheets recovered from the sites give evidence of an extensive trading network even in those early times.

A two to three foot high earthen embankment encircles the entire site. It's hard to imagine that the only tools used in this massive amount of earth moving were shells, baskets and bone hoes! Can you imagine the organization needed -- and the number of workers?

From the mounds, we were able to follow the trail down to the banks of the deep, fast-moving Scioto River.

Along the river is most likely where the Hopewell people built their living quarters.  It is believed that the weather during this time was temperate and the people did not have to spend all of their time finding food and game, thus allowing the immense building projects.

We followed the Nature Trail back along the river and around the embankment through a young forest.

We saw several shrubs like this with red berries sitting almost on the top of the leaves.  I was not able to find what it is in any of my books or on the Internet. Any ideas?

While most of the trees had already dropped their leaves, this golden maple tree stood out like a beacon in the sunshine --

It was further around the trail then we had thought.  We were glad to get back to the car and water!  We took time to drive through Chilliclothe, which was the first capital of Ohio.  There were lots of neat old buildings -- and a place to get some ice cream before we headed back to Auntie Violet. I stuck an acorn squash in the oven with some butter and honey for supper.  We watched the finals of the bull riding that were in Columbus this weekend.  I sure wish we had known they were going to be there -- we would have gone!

Gusty, Windy Day

It is finally quiet outside.  The wind blew all night last night and most of the day today.  It wasn't a steady wind either, it would blow lightly, then wham! with gusts that shook the motor home!  At least the sky was blue when we finally got up this morning -- after staying up late to watch ABC's Diane Sawyer's show about the Lakota Sioux children last night.

Forry dug his Belgian waffle machine out from under the couch and we had waffles and pork sausages for brunch. We did take showers, but otherwise just spent the day vegged out.  Forry watched a couple of football games (WSU is playing Stanford right now); I took a nap and read a book on my Kindle. It was definitely not a day to be running around outside.

We will be staying here at Sun Valley Campground for the next week.  It will give us a chance to have our mail sent and to explore the area.  There are a large number of ancient mounds in the area as well as many historic sites.  Chillicothe was the early capital of what was then the Northwest Territory and later the first capital of Ohio.

And Now We Are in Ohio!

Fall is definitely in the air and it is also getting chillier.  After weeks of Indian Summer with daytime temperatures in the the high eighties and nineties, a cold front has come through with rain, wind and a definite drop in the temperature. We had been thinking about going up to Maine and then coming down the east coast to eventually winter in Florida.  Because of our detour for repairs, it is getting late in the year to head north without thinking about the possibility of snow...

My friend Cathi sent me a page and one-half note of lists of places to see and things to do in Maine (where she used to live) and New England.  I also had a list of some other places I wanted to see as well as visiting out friend Wayne in Waldoboro, Maine.  After we sat and talked about it for a while, we decided that we would wait until Spring to visit New England when we wouldn't have to sweat out bad weather. Then we would head back to Washington visiting North Dakota and Nebraska on the way.  We had been thinking about driving to Alaska next summer, but we have been there twice (by air) and that may not be a priority.

So, with that decision made, we headed south into Ohio today.  We stopped at a Welcome Center and chatted with the friendly fellow on duty.  When he found that we had never spent time in Ohio, he suggested we head towards Chillicothe (south of Columbus) and do some exploring in that area.

The country we drove through today was a little more open then where we had been in Indiana.  There are STILL lots of fields of soybeans and corn -- and corn and soybeans!

One thing I did notice -- the majority of the houses in Ohio are square!  They may have dormers like this one, or they may have a porch attached, but they are square.

This perfectly square building is a county courthouse we saw on the way --

We passed some Amish farms and furniture marts along the way and saw evidence of Amish buggies along the road.  The one buggy we saw had white stripes on the back instead of the orange "slow vehicle" triangle on the ones we saw in Indiana.

 It was NOT a nice day to be driving today.  The cold front that came through brought last night's rain, but also brought gusty winds all day! Highway 23 south is two-lane part of the way, so that meant for extra concentration as well.  We drove longer then we usually like to in order to get to Sun Valley Campground outside of Chilliclothe.  We got here about 6:30, just before dark.

And Several Days Later --

I don't know what's going on with my computer -- or the internet at the ranch! I have NOT been able to connect there at all!

I had spent most of the day Thursday in Moses Lake with my dear friend Phyllis while Vic and Pam went to Wenatchee. It was a blessing to be able just to spend time with her. She slept most of the morning, so I was able to connect with Vic's wireless network; get my Norton virus software downloaded; get all the upgrades for both Microsoft and HP. It seemed like everything was going well...

Got home and attempted to access the internet and nada! I couldn't even get the computer to recognise the aircard...

We went to CleElum Saturday morning for the Memorial Service for our friend Dr. John Anderson at the Middle School Gym. The gym was full and it was a pretty amazing tribute. We heard a lot of stories about his Norwegian sense of humor and about all that he had done for rural health. It was good to see my former AHEC colleagues who were there. The community had a dessert reception following the program. There were three tables stretched the length of their school cafeteria loaded with cookies, cakes and other sweet things!

After the service, we went into Ellensburg to the AT&T store. They suggested that I delete the aircard software from the computer and then let the aircard reinstall it. I did, it reloaded just fine and voila! the computer could again see the aircard.

Got back to the ranch, had three bars, connected just fine, but then again it would not connect to the internet!

We flew to Columbus, Ohio today for the biennial Mennonite Church USA convention. We are at the Crowne Plaza Hotel and when we checked in I did get the password for their wifi system hoping that I could get it to work at least. I plugged in the computer, tried the aircard and it worked perfectly! I just don't understand what is going on!