Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, Chillicothe, Ohio We drove about an hour southeast of us down to a town whose name I’ve read, but never pronounced. Now that I know how to pronounce it, I like the sound of it. It sort of rolls off the tongue, like ‘Prairie du Chien’, except its a very different language. As you approach Chillicothe from the Dayton area, the landscape changes. And, in fact, you enter a different ecological zone. Instead of the Eastern Corn Belt Plains, with its low rolling plains and preponderance of beech forests, we move into the Western Allegheny Plateau, which has more diverse hardwood forests. There is less agricultural land use as the land is slightly more rugged heading up into the Appalachian Mountains themselves. Yesterday will be our only contact with this region, ... read more

Caesar Creek Campground, Wilmington, Ohio We had a down-day planned yesterday for a couple of reasons. An important one had to do with the need to do a dump-and-fill on the trailer. In simple terms that means we needed to dump our sewage tanks and load up on fresh water. It is a bit more complicated than that because, for us anyway, it means we have to secure everything inside the trailer, roll in the slider and awning, hitch the thing back up to the car, tow it over to the dump station, dump, then bring the trailer back and re-establish camp. Although we are pretty good at the whole process, having done it dozens of times by now, it still takes about two hours. Five days is about as long as we can go without ... read more

Wilmington, Ohio Last year, while touring the south, we made an effort to sample local cooking. I mean, who wouldn’t want to try some genuine ‘southern fried chicken’, or key lime pie while in the Keys. It turned out to be a rewarding experience and an additional way of talking about our travel experiences. So this year I thought I’d try the same thing. The problem, of course, is that the ‘Great Lakes Region’ doesn’t exactly have a cooking style that they are famous for. What I did discover in my Google searches was that there are foods that develop in a very local way for some reason. And people have actually gone to the length of identifying different foods by states. So I recorded those options and actually put them into the trip plan so ... read more

Caesar Creek State Park, Wilmington, Ohio Joan hates it when I gloat, but I just have to say that I beat her so badly in the Indiana Tournament (a set of three card games). She is going to have a hard time living that one down. And, no, despite what she says, I did not cheat. Cards is just one of the ways we pass time here in the trailer when we are either too tired to go outside, or the weather is to oppressive. We played a game yesterday waiting for dinner to cook, and I had to gloat about the results... She hates my gloating and threatens all kinds of paybacks when I do so. Some of her threats actually work. Partly because driving does take a lot out of us, we usually end ... read more

George Rogers Clark National Historical Park, Vincennes, Indiana The geographical focus for this trip is the Great Lakes Region. And, as part of that, I expected to learn more about how they were carved out by glaciers and how those glaciers were responsible for most of the geology of the area. Even expected to see some of the oldest rocks on the planet as the North American craton, the original core of the continent, created billions of years ago, is exposed in places nearby. I also expected to to learn about the French and fur traders who were the original explorers of the area. What I did not expect, though, was the political history we picked up yesterday at this bucket list item, and the reason for our stop here in southern Indiana. George Rogers Clark ... read more