Day 73 – We got up at 6 a.m., but we were really dragging & going back to bed would’ve been wonderful. It was raining and the sound of the rain on the roof of the RV is great for sleeping. Alas, it’s a travel day so we forced ourselves to pack up and get ready to leave, all with the help of lots of caffeine. Left Charlestown State Park in Indiana at 8:45 a.m., 60 degrees and raining hard. We drove across the East End Bridge to get into Kentucky and onto I-71 which we took northeast through KY and into Ohio. Kentucky is really beautiful and we’d like to explore it more.
I managed to smash two fingers of my left hand in the door of a gas station restroom stall. That was fun! But it happened because I was trying to prevent myself from falling backwards & hurting my back or hitting my head, all due to wet, slippery floors caused by the heavy rain. (My hand looked really nasty at first, but with lots of ice packs, luckily it healed well.) It rained on & off for most of the drive, at times raining quite hard, but by the time we reached our campground, the rain had subsided; it was 81 degrees, windy & partly cloudy when we arrived at 2 p.m. The scenery was gorgeous with rolling hills and winding roads thru farmlands and small towns in Ohio. It got quite hilly as we approached our campground at Hocking Hills State Park & it was really pretty as the sun peaked out from the clouds. Gradually, as we’ve been traveling further North again, we’ve seen signs of early Spring as the temperatures begin to cool and the leaves on the trees look fluorescent with the new growth. A wonderful time to be on the road.
One of our favorite parts of our journey is to go to a new place without knowing what we’re going to find. You do not know what to expect in advance & there’s never a dull moment. After checking in, we proceeded up the hill on a narrow two-lane road to where the campsites were located, wondering how two big rigs could get by each other simultaneously. Luckily we didn’t encounter another large vehicle going in the opposite direction!
Within the campground the roads were narrow & the campsite pads weren’t that long, so it was often necessary for people to park their tow vehicles with the vehicle sticking out into the road somewhat. We had site #60 with full hook-ups. The full hook-up loop we were on ended nearby at the base of a water tower; you circled the water tower to return on the same narrow road you came in on. After unpacking, we sat and watched the parade of vehicles (which continued for the entire weekend) as they tried to drive by, make the circle, and drive back by. There were kids on bicycles and young children playing in the road, people parading by in their golf carts (some of them customized to look like 50’s era cars with fins and chrome), and people walking their dogs (it was dog heaven, nearly everyone had a dog – the couple two spaces up from us had 4 dogs, two of them large in a vehicle smaller than ours). All this traffic was intermingled with the steady stream of trucks & trailers & cars & RV’s.
When we arrived, the site on one side of us was empty and it was quite close to our site. It was Thursday afternoon, leading to the weekend, and all signs were that the site would be filled. It was VERY close to ours and we worried as we watched the campers arrive, what our new neighbors would be like. (This is something we haven’t mentioned much: the problems (or not) with campground neighbors. They can make or break your visit. Maybe they are a group of late-night partiers who sit outside blasting music you hate while consuming way too much drugs or alcohol, ending in loud arguments at 2:00 in the morning. Maybe they are heavy smokers who remain outside smoking throughout the entire day, and when you open your windows for some fresh air, their cigarette smoke fills your vehicle. Or maybe they have a bunch of young kids who are manic after being cooped up in the vehicle for the long drive, and their parents send them outside to play unsupervised the minute they arrive. And finally, the people who leave their dog or dogs alone for the day while they sightsee & the dogs cry and howl pitifully the entire day until their owners come home. Of course, some RV’s and trailers have loud air conditioners or water pumps – there are many things that you deal with with when camping close to someone else.) We have encountered most of them, but the good thing with this particular weekend was that people were super-friendly and the kids & dogs were pretty well-behaved. It could’ve been a disaster due to the popularity of the campground coupled with the fact it was the weekend, but we did enjoy our stay. It helped that it rained a lot with heavy thunderstorms during our visit, so the throngs of people were only out and about the minute the sun came back out. And most importantly, on Friday we ended up with great neighbors in the site closest to us. More about them later.