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Broke camp Thursday morning at Thousand Trails Wilmington OH to the sounds of distant thunder. I watched my weather app like a nut and knew we needed to leave Wilmington pronto. The storm cell was moving from west to east and we were heading east; that in our favor. The storm followed us for a long time and there was quite a bit of air to ground lightening but we prevailed and only got sprinkled on a little bit.
I have complained about bad roads before on this trip, but the stretch of I70 from Columbus OH we travelled was a disgrace. Teeth rattling, bone jarring, dish rattling trashy road. We had decided to get off I70 at take US 22 north and east to avoid what I saw as construction tie ups as we approached Wheeling WV. We drove US 22 for 3 miles and it was 2 lanes and twisty. I pulled into a parking lot and we decided to go back to the interstate and take our chances. Traffic wise it was an ok decision but the road surface was awful. Then we had to take SR7 north for about 40 miles following the course of the
Ohio River as it twisted and turned thru dilapidated mill towns and even more dilapidated coal generating plants. FYI, coal is pulverized to a powder and burned. The resulting heat is used to turn water into steam. The steam is pressurized and used to spin a turbine connected to an electrical generator. I did not know the process. Amid this dilapidation, was a nuclear reactor. At least I think it is or was a nuclear power plant. Not much to be read about it from my google search, except it uses the Ohio River for cooling, and monster.com is posting for maintenance workers. The corporation that owns it talks a lot about its coal plants, but nothing about nuclear. See picture. It’s in the town of Brilliant, OH. Great name for a city that is home to a nuclear plant, right?
All this back road bumpy stuff led us to the US22E bridge across the Ohio River to West Virginia. The ON ramp to US22E was FREAKIN CLOSED!! Detour to the next exit on SR7N, turn around, get back on SR7S and take the US22E ramp. I really cut it close by cutting off an 18-wheeler and my girlies
tell me they thought I was a goner. If we had stayed on US22E the first time, we would have been able to cross that bridge when we got to it. I don’t know if we made the right decision or not to backtrack. I do know it was an awful ride. WV SR2N for about 20 miles to Mountaineer casino wasn’t much better. We went thru such poor towns, so sad.
No campgrounds in this area at all. There is a state park that got awful reviews. Casino boondocking at Mountaineer Casino was it! I had called to confirm it was ok to park overnight and was told to park in the HARV lot. HARV is a now defunct concert venue with a large empty lot adjacent to the casino, but not near enough to walk on such a hot evening. We corralled around like wagon trains, walked the dogs, turned generators on, turned A/C on and Kim and I took the car to Homer Laughlin Fiestaware factory outlet store. I introduced Kim to Fiesta when I kept saying I wanted to go to the factory store. She looked at some dishes when we were in Branson and
decided they would be wonderful in her new house. She got MANY dishes, I got a few plates and bowls in colors, sizes, and shapes I didn’t have. I facetimed Kristine while there and she made a few selections, too.
The skies opened up while we were there, the rain cleaned the car off a little! Back to the RVs, fed the dogs and drove over to the casino for a so-so buffet and a few minutes of gambling. They had my favorite games, too, Shop Til You Drop, and Open the Vault. I only lost a little. Very little. We told the Security Guard we were in this lot and he said security will drive thru 6 times overnight. The lot is very well lit and I feel safe, despite the remoteness of the lot.
Back to the rigs, walked the dogs again; it finally is cooling down so generator got turned off. It’s not needed; even though the air antenna has 11 channels including CBS and NBC there is no ABC for Grey’s Anatomy or Scandal. Frak. Next best thing, stream Season 3 episodes of Netflix’s Bosch.
All had a good boondocking sleep. The parking
lot was so well lit we all thought it was daylight all night long. No noise, no nothing. I even slept until 7:30. We were gone by 9. It ended up being a very hard trip, again. There was construction in WV, there was construction in PA that held us up for 20 minutes or so. We had 2 tunnels to go thru. They both had a sign, NO FLAMMABLE LIQUIDS. I ignored that and blew thru. I should have at least stopped and turned the propane off, but there was no place to pull off the road. I hadn’t even picked up that we would be going thru tunnels!! Then a few wrong turns due to DAMN GARMINA NOT WORKING! And I had to pay attention to iPhone Google Maps. My phone went into powersave mode when the battery went low and I didn’t know it and ended up blowing past the campground street. Such a pain.
Hickory Hollow campground really is in the middle of nowhere farm fields. It’s a nice place, brand new campground, lots of new tables, fire rings, gravel, store and a fenced dog park which is up a hill, of course; I haven’t
been there, too steep. We are all parked together in a row. But, the best part of the day is AUNT JUDY COUGHLIN came for 2 nights. So good to see her, it’s been about 2 years since I last saw her and just so good to catch up. We can pick up where we last left off just like sisters. It rained off and on, but we decided to go to Dough Girls Pizza, four miles up the road and it ended up being really good pizza!!! Judy brought cold cuts with her!!! I should have stayed home and ate them instead of pizza. Gorgeous rainbow when we got home from pizza.
A leisurely evening, watching a little TV, doing a lot of catching up since we last spoke and to bed. Winston slept the entire night on the dinette bed with Judy. When she got up in the middle of the night for the bathroom, he took the whole bed. Clown.
A leisurely morning as well, made bacon and eggs, juice, toast, coffee and off to The Flight 93 Memorial in nearby Shanksville, well, actually, Stoystown. Quite a sobering place, for sure. Judy has been here
before; she recommended starting at the crash site of the Memorial. Using my handicap hangtag, we got the primo parking place, again. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, but please note, in the panorama pictures the walls look curved. They are not, it is all straight lines. Some of these lines follow the flight path of the jet, and others show the borders of the boundary of the crash site. A large boulder has been placed at the exact site of impact into a totally spent and partially filled in surface coal mine. 100 trees were burned in the explosion, mostly hemlock, and they have been replaced over the past 16 years. We were told by other campers that there was a group planting trees yesterday and today, and someone else told us that they were planting 40 groves with 40 trees in each grove, in the 2000 acres encompassing this site. One for each of the 40 victims. Another friend who works for the US Forestry Service in western PA told us it was his coworkers who were participating in this project and it was the first year he had missed taking part. We drove to the
upper portion which was a mile walk…uphill……not for me. This was the actual Visitor Center, one stamp. I had to get a sticker, cheap here $3.95. There is an observation deck out over the ‘pasture’ for lack of a better descriptive word, and it, too, followed the flight path. Inside the visitor center, no movie. Instead, there were several rows of walls following the timeline from AA Flight 93 takeoff from Newark to the end of the rescue and evidence collecting effort. There were the news reports we all remember, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, President Bush, etc. Over the years, the coal mine has been totally filled in and replanted with native grasses and plants. A sobering experience. I remember the day like yesterday. I was working at Robert Half in Woodbridge, NJ - in a building next to the HESS building at Rte9/NJ Turnpike/GSP intersection, with an unobstructed view of the towers. A jet came cruising past our building very low, which they sometimes did on their landing pattern to EWR and we commented as it shook the building. Several minutes later said there was smoke coming out of a Twin Tower. We gathered around the windows and
saw the second plane strike, and saw both towers fall. I had tucked these memories into a secure place in my brain and they came back today and I was sad. We all were sad.
Onward.
What do we do best? Follow Kim’s research lead on the best place to eat in town. She directed to the Coalfields Diner at the Gulf Station in Stoystown. Diner at a gas station being the best in town?? Yeah, right. Well, it had rave reviews, especially the fries and onion rings. It truly was in the store of the gas station. Complete with orange pleather banquettes and a biker crowd. (I wondered what all the patrons were doing wearing what I thought were (snow) powder pants and Kim suggested they were bike pants. Duh.) Hamburger and onion rings for Judy, Kim tuna melt and bacon ranch macaroni salad (she said was so so), Ginnie had a cheesesteak with fries, and I had fish tacos. All were excellent. The fried stuff was crisp on the outside and perfect on the inside. Our waiter was 100% Irish American, born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens, and abused us all in fun the entire
time. Lunch for each of us approx $10. At the checkout, ready for us to gobble up were what I call whoopee pies, but the locals here call them GOBS. Very large spongy cakes filled with twinkie style cream. I buy them at every visit to the Amish country, and so wanted one of these decadent looking things, but abstained.
Back to the RV for a NAP! Fell asleep in the shade sitting bolt upright while crocheting. Happy Hour where we made travel plans for tomorrow to Gettysburg and laughed about some of the events of the week. Hard to believe we are really ending on Wednesday morning.
Kat out
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