Trip No. 4- Versailles State Park and Lawrenceburg Speedway

We left home on Saturday morning, August 22^th for a one night stay and adventure at Versailles State Park in Indiana. Alvalee had suggested we go with her to see the Hoffmans race their sprint car at Lawrenceburg Speedway and we decided we might as well make it an “Adventure on the Edge.” This was our first out of state trip with the camper, though it really wasn't any farther than Paint Creek State Park. It was also our first trip without the poochies... ...and they weren't too happy to be left at home.

We pulled out at 9:00 AM sharp for the 67-mile drive to the park. This was a simple route; take I-275 to the Lawrenceburg exit then follow Route 50 all the way to the park. There were a few hills that caused the Pathfinder to strain a little bit, but nothing too bad, though it did take a toll on gas mileage. We only averaged 10 mpg on our way there.

We got to the park around 10:30 AM, picked out a site, No. 183, filled up our water tank and set up camp. As soon as we were established we headed into Versailles to check out the town. We walked around Versailles and found some interesting sites, including a beautiful Methodist church, markers describing Morgan’s Raiders ride through the town, and the county courthouse. We also picked up desert for lunch, cherry pie and vanilla ice cream and some sour cream for the chicken tacos. One of the locals in the store enjoyed relating to us all the “specials” that weren’t really available.

http://picasaweb.google.com/milfordmagic/VersaillesStatePark?authkey=Gv1sRgCJvisMOm2sPJ8wE&feat=directlink

When we got back to the park we chowed down and then did a little exploring. We visited the lake, the nature center and the camp store. Diane wasn’t too impressed with the offerings at the store but the nature center was OK. The lake looked beautiful, as is the rest of the park, but this trip is really about the races, not so much about the camping.

After a short snooze, that ended with a driving rainstorm drumming on the Edge, we packed up the Pathfinder and headed for Lawrenceburg and the Speedway. The weather looked threatening and it was definitely cool for a mid-August day. The high was somewhere in the mid 60’s and it got down into the 50’s at night. We were lucky though, we didn't have another drop of rain.

The drive back to Lawrenceburg was 25 miles. We stopped and filled up the car so we wouldn’t need to deal with that pulling the camper on Sunday morning. Eleven gallons, 110 mile, pretty easy calculation, 10 miles per gallon. That’s a lot less than we got on our trips to East Fork and Paint Creek. Must have been the hills.

We got to the Speedway at 6:00 PM, discovered that it hadn’t rained a drop there, and that the hot laps (a form of practice) had been postponed until 6:30 PM since drivers were still arriving, having raced in Illinois earlier in the day.

When the hot laps finally started Hoffman Racing’s car was in the second group. The car was driven by Jerry Combs Jr., last year’s sprint car driving champion. He looked strong in the hot laps and the heat races and easily qualified for the feature race. The feature was called the Dick Gaines Memorial, dedicated to a former successful driver from the ‘70’s. The prize for winning was a nice $10,000.

Leading up to the feature were a whole series of races, the heat races for the sprints, but also winged sprints and modified cars. But the sprints were definitely the highlighted races. The sprint cars weigh 1200 lbs but have 400 cubic inch engines producing between 800 and 900 horsepower.

The feature race was the longest, 30 laps in length. There were only two yellow flags during the whole race, even though 24 cars were on the track at the same time. Both of the yellow flags were very early. Hoffman’s car started in the third row but climbed to third place very quickly. When the second yellow flag was shown Combs had just passed the lead car. That meant he started first and when the green flag was shown he ran away with the lead. When he encountered the slower cars again he did a great job passing them without incident, holding the lead until the checker flag and the victory. Diane caught the entire race on the FLIP but it’s just a bit too long to host on You Tube. We do have a few pictures from the race.

http://picasaweb.google.com/milfordmagic/LawrenceburgSpeedway?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ3l1dKezI6e9gE&feat=directlink

The race was over around 11:30 PM (we had no idea we’d be there that late) and we headed back to the campground. We got in around midnight. Alvalee crashed, but unfortunately developed a headache from the car fumes that would bother her all night. Diane and I stayed up and watched the “RV” DVD until 1:30 AM.

We all got up around 8:00 AM, ate, and were on the road by 9:00 AM, the exact same time we pulled out of Wardwood the day before!

The drive back was an easy one, though Alvalee and I talked most of the way…. Excedrin highs. We were home at little after 10:30 AM and the Edge was emptied, cleaned and ready for storage well before noon.

Trip No. 3 - Paint Creek State Park and Vicinity

http://picasaweb.google.com/milfordmagic/PaintCreekStatePark?feat=directlink

We left home on Friday, August 7th, at 4:00 PM and headed east towards Bainbridge, Ohio and Paint Creek State Park. The distance to the park was about 65 miles and we made it in a little over 90 minutes. The camper pulled great and the roads (primarily US Route 50) were, by and large, straight and flat. There were a couple of uphill sections but they weren’t too long, or too steep, and didn’t pose much of a problem for the Pathfinder.

We checked in at the park and then went to look for a place to fill the Edge’s tanks with water for our stay. The Edge holds 30 gallons but we travel empty to reduce the towing weight. Finding potable water proved much more difficult than it was at East Fork. The bathhouses were the only places with outside running water. When we found one that wasn’t crowded with cars it was about 100’ the wrong way down a one-way road. I drove down it anyway (rebel) but then was faced with turning the camper and car around in a very tiny space to get pointed in the right direction. We were very near camper-car contact on the turn but made it, filled up with water, and headed to our site.

We had reserved site No. 63. That was good news and bad. The site sits pretty much by itself, surrounded by the woods, but right by the entrance to all three of the camping loops. So we didn’t have anyone right next to us but we did have a lot of vehicle traffic going by us until later in the evening. It really didn’t bother either of us and we would pick this site again if we came back to Paint Creek.

We ate homemade cheese conies for dinner then took the dogs for a little walk around one of the campground loops. This park has some sites near the lake that have decks that adjoin the camper pad and we checked them out to see if we would be interested in reserving one for a future visit. Not really. The majority of these dock sites seemed to be pretty steep and useless. We also drove over to the reservoir dam and checked out the sunset across the lake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67_Yv_wIenQ

When we got back to the Edge we decided to go for a drive. Imagine that. We’re still not much for just sitting and chilling, at least not yet. We ended up in Greenfield, Ohio, a Blanchester-size town about ten miles north of the park.

On the way there we passed through the smallest underpass we have ever seen. The posted height was something just a few inches over seven feet and there was less than three feet clearance on either side of the Pathfinder. Restricted passageways like this one are one reason why we didn’t want a big RV. We want to park the camper and then be able to explore without dragging our “remote home” around with us. Well, that and the fact that the big motor coaches can easily cost $500,000.

Somewhere along the way to Greenfield we noticed in our trusty old Ohio Gazetteer that we had been to a covered bridge just south of there on April, 9, 1999. So, ten years later, we went looking, in the dark, for that bridge. We found it just outside of a little burg called South Salem, which is also the name of the covered bridge. It was a solid, if short, little red bridge that is still used for day-to-day traffic. We shot a very short Flip video with the bridge lit only by the car headlights. Here's the YouTube rendition of that video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqnZHS4c1yo

After visiting the bridge we headed back to our campsite for the evening. My plan was to read a book, the autobiography of Guns and Roses’ star, Slash. I had just downloaded it onto my new e-Book reader, Amazon’s Kindle DX. Unfortunately, like a dumbbell I had forgotten to bring the power cord and had only charged it for a short time when I received it two days earlier. A fully-charged Kindle is supposed to hold a charge for four days. I now know a partially charged one is good for a couple of days. Oh well. Turned on the TV and scanned for local stations… …found one and it was a network station. We watched a little TV then snoozed off. Strangely enough, we weren’t able to pick up the station again the rest of our stay.

Saturday morning we awoke at 8:00 AM. It doesn’t appear the dogs are going to be too interested in sleeping in much later than 7:00 or 8:00 AM in the morning when we go on these trips. They’ve already figured out there is adventure on the horizon and one or the other of them always needs “relief.” We ate some pastries for breakfast, locked up the Edge and hit the road by 9:00 AM.

We decided today would be “Mound Day;” there are three prehistoric Indian mounds in the vicinity of Paint Creek State Park, Seip Mound, Fort Hill and Serpent Mound. We had been to Serpent Mound years earlier when the kids were young, but never to the other two.

Seip Mound was just beyond Bainbridge, Ohio and probably was the dogs’ favorite stop. The mound was a big one surrounded by a circular mound-ring. We let the dogs run free since there was no one else in the little roadside park. They loved it! We got some pictures and videos of them hamming it up.

Further south below US Route 50 and just off State Route 41 we found Fort Hill. Fort Hill has a nice little museum, where we discovered that the State of Ohio was no longer supporting that park, or Serpent Mound. They are now being maintained by a private organization. Budget cuts are hitting everywhere.

We took the Fort Hill trail, about 2 miles in length and a bit on the steep side at the beginning. The trail climbs 400 ft. in elevation to reach the remains of the ancient prehistoric earthwork. In this case the mound was a constructed hill (mistakenly assumed to be a fort) that surrounds 48 acres atop a hill almost 1200 ft above sea level. The mound is completely grown over with trees and eroded down somewhat so it’s not entirely recognizable if you don’t look for it. There are several small natural bridges in the area but they were along another four mile trail, the Gorge Trail, which we did not take… …though we were told it is a beautiful trail. Maybe next time.

Once again the doogies had a great time, though they were frightened by what we believe was a male deer on the hike back to the car. The noise he made was a bit frightening but it appears he was just posturing as the noise kept getting quieter the closer we got.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9PJel0KHIU

Leaving Fort Hill we headed farther south to Serpent Mound. Serpent Mound is the most clearly defined of the three we visited and includes a nice lookout tower to view the “serpent” in its entirety from 50 ft. or so in the air. The warm air began to turn hot while we were visiting Serpent Mound. Eventually it reached 90 degrees, about as hot as it has been the entire summer.

On our way back we stumbled upon a small store, “Country Crust” selling fresh baked Amish pastry products of all sort, at great prices. We bought a small rhubarb pie, my absolute favorite pie!

We saw Amish and their buggies quite a bit on the trip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLrHG_xQ-kE

We got back to the Edge about six hours after we had left a bit hungry and tired. After a nice lunch/dinner of perfect one-day-old stuffed pepper soup and rhubarb pie ala mode. We decided to crash for a bit. I think I snoozed for almost an hour and a half while Diane read magazines… …they don’t need to be charged.

Around 6:30 we headed out to Chillicothe, Ohio, about a 28 mile ride from our campground. Just northeast of Chillicothe is Great Seal State Park. Jim, Keith and I are contemplating a disc golf adventure this fall that will include the courses at Rocky Fork and Pike Lake State Park as well as the one at Great Seal. I thought we would check out the campground to see if it would be a good place to park the camper during the trip… …not! There are only 15 sites at Great Seal and most of them are for horse campers. None of the sites have electricity and there was no evidence of a dump site. My conclusion was that we should make Paint Creek our home base and drive to the other courses from there. Rocky Fork would also be an OK base.

While we were there we walked 10 of the holes of the disc golf course. The course has dirt tee pads which aren’t the best thing in the world if it’s wet but otherwise they are fine. The first hole was generally in the open then the course headed into the woods. The next eight holes were in an open woods. Except for the fact that the first three were up hill, the holes all looked really interesting. Hole 10 was back out in the open. We didn’t walk the rest of the course but found one upon leaving that paralleled the road for over 300’, with a very narrow fairway between the road and the woods, and then doglegged hard to the right for the last 100 feet. Looked like a really tough hole to play, especially if you honor the road as out of bounds. Fortunately, we don’t. Here's a link to a short YouTube video of holes 9, 10 and 14.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZdq3O1ASPY

We took State Route 28 back towards Greenfield and then headed south to the camper. Once again we got back after dark, around 9:30 PM. The campground was very quiet. We finished off the rhubarb pie and sat outside the camper until a little after 11:00 PM. It’s was a nice night and there was an occasional gentle breeze to help cool the air. Crash time was around midnight.

Saturday morning wake up call was issued by Sparky about 7:00 AM. We had some fresh peaches for breakfast and some more pastries. We were on the road by 8:30 AM. A couple of miles out I noticed the light wasn’t displaying on the trailer’s electric brake module on the dashboard. A quick stop revealed that the plug from the Edge to the Pathfinder wasn’t completely seated. Problem solved.

The drive back was uneventful… …well, Flash got our attention that she needed a pit stop just east of Hillsboro… …but other than that, no problems. We were home just a little after 10:00 AM. Our total travel distance just topped 313 miles, with only 130 of those miles being the distance to and from the park.

The Edge will be going to the storage lot as next weekend as been proclaimed, “work around the house weekend.” No plans are finalized for Trip No. 4 but we’re comfortable expanding the possibilities now that we are comfortable with pulling, parking and using our new toy.

Camping Trip No. 2

We decided to take the Edge out for an overnight trip again. East Fork Lake is so close and the sites are nice so we headed there on Saturday afternoon, August 1, 2009, for a short trip.

The weather cooperated and we had a nice 18 hour stay. We watched our fist DVD in the Edge, "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind."

One of the campers kids, "Junior," came over and played fetched with the dogs for a while. Nice boy, he definitely was in love with Sparky.

This time we stayed in Loop E, lot No. 147. We were surprised to see it vacant. It had a nice tree and lots of open space around it. The campground was really quiet this time and we had a relaxing time.

We got up at 7:30 AM and were back home before 10:00 AM. After we got home we gave the camper its first "bath," cleaning off some of the stains that have been visible since we picked it up last month.

It's out there basking in the sun right now.