Ohio

My next stop was Ohio, but I wanted to stop by Letchworth State Park in New York, which was advertised as some of the most magnificent scenery in the United States.  It comprises 14,350 acres along the Genesee River. Within the park, the river roars over three major waterfalls, one of which is 107 feet high. The cliffs, created by the river's path over thousands of years, approach 600 feet. I had heard this was the Grand Canyon of the East.  While it was a great park, I don’t know about Grand Canyon… 

I arrived too late in the day on Sunday to really do any exploring.  Monday morning I got up early, excited to do some hiking.  But alas, it was cold and drizzling.  I waited a few hours, but it just got worse, so I thought what the heck, I’m headed out.  I decided to drive as much as possible and not hike the whole thing.  The park was really beautiful and low and behold the rain stopped as I reached the first waterfall.  I was able to get some great pictures and get a short hike in, so it was a good day.  The waterfalls were some of the best I’ve seen on the east coast.  The last one was really cool because there was a train track high above it and as I stood there, a train came inching along.  Absolutely no way would I want to be on a train crossing that!  It was so high and so narrow it gave me chills watching the train.   

I found out the park accepts volunteers for 2 to 4 weeks.  Most of the parks I looked at this year wanted a 6 month commitment. I loved this park and decided to go back next year as a volunteer.  Much cheaper that way! 

On Tuesday I left New York and went to Salt Fork State Park in Lore City Ohio.  I was meeting my friends Lorrie and Greg ; we were going to another FROG rally in Xenia, Ohio.  They are seasonal campers at an RV park nearby and I met them after work to check out their park.  It was really nice, I see why they love it there.  Since the drive to Xenia was less than 3 hours, we got a leisurely start to the day, which was nice.  Normally on a travel day, I get up early and rush around to get on the road.  We decided to stop at an RV dealer on the way, just to look around.  We looked at a few models and talked to a salesman.  I’m tempted to trade mine in for a different floor plan and I asked the salesman about the model that has the living room up front.  He didn’t have one for me to look at, but he said the cost was about $90K.  Just what I needed to hear, I don’t really need a new rig anyway!

We got to the fairgrounds and were greeted by many of the people from the rally in Niagara Falls.  It was a great weekend, we basically just hung out.  Lorrie cooked us awesome breakfasts 2 of the 3 mornings.  I decided to try out a French Toast casserole on the last day.  I got all the ingredients and started cooking.  I wish I had read the entire directions, I was supposed to let it soak overnight!  Uh oh… I let it set for about an hour and it was eatable.  We decided to make a trip to Young’s Jersey Dairy.  We had heard about how great their ice cream was and oh boy was it!  We also had fried cheese curds.  Ice cream and cheese curds, what a combination.  While we ate our ice cream, we walked around the farm.  They were several tents set up where people were selling wool of all kinds.  I wouldn't have believed there was that much variety, but there were probably 50 vendors, all selling something different.  There were a few Alpacas there, one had a cute hair cut so I had to get a few shots of him.

 

Of course we had a few dinners at the rally, seems like eating is a favorite activity.  We also had some great campfires, almost everyone came and the circle was huge.  The 2^nd night I made sure we got there early and sat closer to the fire.  The weather was a bit chilly once the sun went down.  

Sunday came all too quickly and it was time for everyone to go.  My next destination was all of 18 miles away, so I was in no hurry to leave.  I stayed at Caesar Creek State Park for my last week in Ohio.  It was a nice little park, with lots of hiking.  I got to my assigned site, which was beautiful.  There were huge trees and I was at the back of the loop, so I wouldn’t have a lot of traffic.  Unfortunately all the trees meant I couldn’t get a satellite signal.    Normally it wouldn’t matter, but tonight was the series finale of Dexter.  No way was I going to miss that!  I thought the ending was pretty good, but when I checked out their Facebook page, I was surprised at how much, and how universally, people hated it!  Sure there were some pretty unbelievable parts, like when Dexter pulled the plug on his brain dead sister then carried her out of the hospital and onto his boat, parked right outside.  And how he turned his boat into an oncoming hurricane, but survived to be seen next in a logging camp in the North West someplace.  But the whole series was pretty unbelievable.  For those not in the know, Dexter is a blood spatter expert for Miami Homicide.  Oh and he kills people.  Mostly other murders, but also two detectives he worked with who caught on to him.  So, once you put aside the fact that this show couldn’t happen in real life, and what police show could really, it was pretty good.  And since they didn’t kill him off, there could always be something else down the road.  Maybe…. 

The first two days I spent just catching up on chores.  I had been going nonstop for the past 3 weeks.  I started my days with a nice hike around the park then got to work on the chores. Laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, organizing  the storage compartment…  By day 3 I was ready for some fun so I headed to Hocking Hills. 

Hocking Hills is a state park in South Eastern Ohio that boasts some interesting rock formations including cliffs, gorges, rock shelters and waterfalls.  The two most popular are Old Man’s Cave and Ash Cave.  The relatively extreme topography in this area is due to the Blackhand Sandstone, a particular formation that is thick, hard and weather resistant and so forms high cliffs and narrow, deep gorges.  The park was about 2 hours from my campground, and as always, I sure wish I had gotten there earlier! 

I started out on the Gorge Tail that would take me to Old Man’s Cave and saw some beautiful sights in this hemlock forest.  There were interesting rock formations, dramatic cliffs, nice little waterfalls a some great stone bridges.  The rock shelters resemble half a sandwich.  More than 330 million years ago, the region was covered by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  For millions of years the ocean’s currents deposited immense amounts of sand and gravel.  Eventually, the ocean receded and the sandy layers bonded with silica to form the Black Hand Sandstone that underlies the area.  There was a hard top and bottom with a soft middle layer.  About 10,000 years ago the landscape underwent dramatic changes as glaciers gave way to rivers.  When the glacial torrent found cracks in the hard capstone the water poured trough to flush out the soft middle layer. This left long tunnels where the gorges are today.  Eventually the weight of the tops caused them to come crashing down.  The “Slum Rocks” in the gorges today are what’s left of the hard top layer.   

There is an interesting story to how Old Man’s Cave got its name.  The name hints at a rock shelter where Richard Rowe once lived. He was a hermit in the 19th century, who they say, is buried under a cave ledge in the area. Before settling in the Hocking Hills area, the Rowe family had their home in the eastern part of Tennessee.  The Rowe brothers, David and Richard Henry trekked with their father to the Ohio River banks after their mother passed away and started a trading post. While David pursued a career as a freighter pilot, Richard joined the family trade business and stayed in it till 1810.  After this he traveled the Scioto and Ohio rivers for two years, watching closely all the happenings of the 1812 War. Following those 2 fateful years, he became a loner and chose to live a solitary existence in the forest.  Richard often took trips to the gorge in the fall and stayed there throughout the trapping season. He took a walk to the Ozarks to visit his brother and found out David had died, leaving behind a widow with no money to support herself.  Richard promised to return with money he had kept safe in the Old Man’s Cave and left. In view of the promise he had made, Richard trekked back to the gorge. One day he stopped at a stream for water like he always did. As was usual, Richard used his musket’s butt to crack the ice when something unusual and terribly unfortunate happened.  The weapon fired and hit him under the chin. They say he was found two days later by trappers who coffined his body with an oak tree’s bark and gave him as good a burial ceremony as was possible with the supplies they found in the forest. To this day, not a single person knows the exact space where Richards was buried in the Old Man’s Cave.  There was also another time in Richard’s life when he gave his relatives a scare. His relatives and friends looked for him for 3 whole years and thought he was dead when he reappeared and told them he had only been gone to visit his brother David. Richard is the man this cave has been named after, almost as if it were his cave; the Old Man’s Cave. 

Of the two main caves, I liked Ash Cave better.  I thought it was more impressive.  Ash Cave is named for large amounts of ashes that early settlers discovered in the cave. These settlers believed that Native Americans used Ash Cave for shelter and that the resultant ashes were from the campfires. Ash Cave was also used by early Hocking Hills settlers as a temporary church.  It is the largest recess cave in Ohio and measures nearly 700 feet from end to end, by 100 feet deep from front to rear, and 90 feet high from floor to roof. The horseshoe-shaped Ash Cave is in the southern portion of the Hocking Hills State Park and those hiking to the cave approach through a tree-lined gorge and valley floor rich with native wildflowers. A tributary of the East Fork of Queer Creek, which created Ash Cave, still flows over the rim forming a pool below.

 

After a short week spent sightseeing, it was time to get back to work, so I headed to Goshen Indiana for my next Habitat build.

Link to pictures: https://plus.google.com/photos/118205599704530902363/albums/5928109425652450529?authkey=CMq4nu2DoKbK2QE