We’re back in Pennsylvania … Downingtown, Pennsylvania to be precise. Our son Daryl, his wife Laura, and their daughter and our granddaughter Lilly are the next stop on our Grand American Tour. We arrived here late Thursday evening, December 4, 2014 (Happy Birthday, Jim (December 4) and Happy Birthday, Laura (December 3)) after an eight-hour drive from Pickerington, Ohio.
We had a very nice visit with Jim and family in Union, Kentucky. It was a great place to spend Thanksgiving, get our laundry done, do some shopping, and do a whole lot of visiting and talking. Jim plays a binary game of Scrabble. He thoroughly trounced everyone in the first game and then came in last (by a lot) on the second game. He serves on the High Council in his Stake and is assigned to a small branch south of Union. I went with him to the meetings at the Branch on Sunday morning and then we went to his home Ward on Sunday afternoon … except that Jim had to take his son Steven to the emergency room where Steven was completely mis-diagnosed as having a canker sore in his upper lip rather than what really was a raging infection caused by getting “stabbed” by the dental hygienist while getting his teeth cleaned earlier in the week. That was the only excitement for the week…. but was more than enough.
On Monday, December 1st, we left Union and meandered along southern Ohio. We drove down along the Ohio River then up to some Indian mound locations (hence the picture at the top of the page). While driving along we came across a very unusual driveway … at least unusual for us. It turns out there were a number of places along this river with very similar driveways! Why go to the expense of a bridge??
We spent the night in a nice little campground near Frankfort, Ohio. They have a few sites open year around. They are very nice people, run a great operation, and I highly recommend them. HOWEVER, be careful when using a GPS to get there! Their website says:
For those of you with GPS please note, Hwy 28 to South Musselman will lead to a dead end road. The bridge that connects North Musselman and South Musselman has been out for 30 years but the maps have not been updated to reflect that change. County Road 550 is the only road to cross North Musselman Station Road.
Of course, I didn’t read the directions … just entered the address into our TomTom GPS unit (known for getting us almost all the way there). Nina was driving and as we went down, down, down on a very sketchy road, we came to a “Road Closed Ahead” sign. There was a small area where we could turn around. When we got back up out of the valley and had cell phone signal again, Google gave us much better directions.
As an aside, the GPS manufacturers such as Magellan, Garmin, TomTom, etc., need to take a page from Google’s book. Our TomTom first asks for the state, then the city, then the road, and finally, the number. It doesn’t let us enter things like “North Musselman Station Road”, only “Musselman Station Road”. Directions like north, east, south, and west can’t be entered for the street name. Google, on the other hand, has you enter the entire address at one time: “2466 N. Musselman Station Road, Frankfort Ohio” and then parses the address into the correct elements. That’s a Much Nicer User Experience!
On Tuesday we stopped at a couple more Indian mound locations including the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe, Ohio. That was a fascinating visit. We now have books and info to learn more.
We arrived at Nina’s brother Ralph’s home about dark on Tuesday to a delicious lasagne dinner. We parked the motor home in their driveway and spent two nights and Wednesday with them. We went to a huge antique mall where, after two hours, I’d only been through maybe half of the store and then went to the North Market. During the summer this is apparently a huge farmers market. During the winter a number of vendors are doing business indoors. I bought some very nice chocolate from a Belgian chocolatier. I now wish I had bought twice as much!
The weather has been quite cooperative for December. It’s been cold … but we’ve avoided the snow (for the most part) and have enjoyed a few sunny days. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is not a fun road to drive even in the best of weather. I’m very thankful for the great weather we’ve enjoyed.
Life is very good!
Meanwhile, more pictures. Here are some of the covered bridges in Ashtabula County we visited:
