Living Our Dream

Holmes County, OH Part I: Getting Settled

Berlin, OH - Events of Thursday, August 16 to Sunday, August 18, 2012

Our drive on Thursday was about three hours, which was longer than the previous two drives of only an hour and a half, but less than our preferred maximum of four hours. Our destination was Berlin, OH, which is in the heart of Ohio's Amish country in Holmes County.

By the time we hooked up the car and went to the dump station, we didn't get on the road until well after 10:00 AM. Therefore, by the time we also made a fuel stop, we didn't get to Scenic Hills RV Park until almost 2:00 PM. Scenic Hills is a well-kept RV park just to the east of downtown Berlin. It is run by a nice Menonite couple who work hard to make the campground a pleasant place to stay.

Scenic Hills has full hookups. There are no bathroom or shower facilities, so it is for self-contained RVs only. There are a mixture of pull-throughs and back-ins, and a mixture of 30-amp sites and 30/50-amp sites. Transmitters for the free Wi-Fi are located at numerous spots around the campground, so reception is good. The W-Fi is also fairly fast, which was a good thing because, although Verizon cell service seemed OK, the Verizon Broadband was a little spotty where we were located on the lower sites. We had our external, roof-top Wilson antenna hooked up to our Pantech modem, but we don't have an amplifier so we couldn't always get online with Verizon.

The roads at Scenic Hills are semi-paved (tar and chips), and the pads are gravel. As we have explained in previous posts, Scenic Hills has sites on three levels. The upper and lower levels have grass between the sites and the middle level is all gravel. The spacing between most of the sites isn't bad for a private campground, although a few sites are a little close together.

We like to get a site on the lower level because there is a lumber mill next to the campground, and we think the noise from the equipment at the mill is less on the lower level. Fortunately, the lumber mill shuts down at 3:00 PM, and it doesn't operate on the weekends.

Our site on the lower level

View of some of the other sites on the lower level

The nightly rate at Scenic Hills for a regular site is $30, but there are discounts for stays of 3 nights or longer. We are going to be at Scenic Hills for 4 weeks, so we got the monthly rate of $525.

Since we are doing a little less traveling and staying longer at each stop this year, we are making a lot of those stops in our favorite places. Holmes County is definitely one of our favorites because we love seeing the neatly-kept Amish farms, the horses and buggies and all the bright flowers that are everywhere in summer. We also love the delicious food that is available.

Amish farm in Holmes County

Flowers are everywhere in summer

As we said, we didn't arrive until almost 2:00. Margery usually packs sandwiches for us to eat on the way if we think we will be arriving at our destination much after 1:00, but she didn't this time. Therefore, shortly after we got set up, we went to Der Dutchman restaurant in nearby Walnut Creek to have their salad bar for lupper. In addition to plenty of delicious salad fixin's, the salad bar also includes things like chicken salad, ham salad, three bean salad, pasta salad, sweet 'n' sour carrots, pickled beets, and much more.

Der Dutchman has about half a dozen restaurants in Ohio that specialize in Amish-style cooking. The same company also owns Das Dutch Essenhaus in Middlebury, IN, and they recently opened a new location in Sarasota, FL. Sarasota is a favorite winter vacation destination for Amish and Mennonites from all over the country.

You'll be hearing more about Der Dutchman because we'll be eating there several times while we're in Berlin. We will have to try to pace ourselves so we don't blow all the progress we've made with our diets, especially since we will be heading to Pittsburgh soon for our annual doctor checkups. We have both reached our final goals, and we have each lost around 30 pounds.

After leaving Der Dutchman, we swung past Winesburg Meats to get some beef snack sticks that are like a cross between Slim Jims and summer sausage. We only got two packages on this stop (one dozen sticks per package), but we'll definitely be getting more for the freezer before we leave Berlin.

Winesburg Meats

Paul went to Keim Lumber in the nearby town of Charm, OH on Friday morning while Margery stayed back at the motor home. Keim Lumber is a huge home center that, in addition to the usual building supplies, also sells a nice selection of fine hardwoods including many exotic varieties. They have an enormous selection of tools and an extensive stock of hardware items that go beyond what you normally find in Lowe's and Home Depot. Paul spent almost two hours just walking around checking out what they had to offer.

Keim Lumber

Exotic hardwoods at Keim Lumber

Just part of the selection of hand-held power tools at Keim Lumber

On Saturday, we went back to Der Dutchman for their breakfast buffet. Although they serve the buffet every day, we are in the habit of going on Saturday because that's when we used to go when we went to Berlin for the weekend from our stick house in Pittsburgh. That's also when we go when Lora and J. Michael meet us in Berlin for the weekend.

Der Dutchman restaurant

The breakfast buffet at Der Dutchman includes scrambled eggs, a couple of kinds of potatoes, French toast sticks, mini pancakes, oatmeal, fried mush, sausage gravy, biscuits, bacon, breakfast sausage (sometimes links, sometimes patties, sometimes both), smoked sausage, cold cereal, several kinds of pudding, fresh fruit salad, frozen fruit slush, cinnamon rolls and more.

Margery about to dig into breakfast

After breakfast, we did the other thing we traditionally do on Saturday in the Berlin area, and that was to go to one of the two area flea markets. The Holmes County Flea Market is located just down the road from Scenic Hills. In fact, you can see the building from the far end of the campground. The other flea market that we decided to save for another time is the Amish Flea Market, and it is located in Walnut Creek to the east of Der Dutchman.

Holmes County Flea Market

Both area flea markets have mostly new merchandise, and much of it is country-style decorative items.

Paul posing with owls at one of the booths at the flea market

As we have mentioned before, just about everything in the area is closed on Sunday. We spent most of the day relaxing and watching the NASCAR race. We'll let you know what else we find to do in our next post.

 

Caesar Creek State Park, OH

Wilmington, OH - Events of Friday, August 10 to Thursday, August 16, 2012

We took our time again leaving Little Farm on the River RV Resort on Friday because we had another short drive of only about 1½ hours to our next destination at Caesar Creek State Park near Wilmington, OH. Caesar Creek SP has always has been a favorite place of ours. It is located northeast of Cincinnati, and it is about 5 hours from where we used to live in Pittsburgh. We used to camp there on almost every long holiday weekend.

One of the things we like about Caesar Creek is the widely-spaced, grassy sites. Another thing we like is the fact the place us usually pretty empty during the week. In fact, Caesar Creek, along with some of the other Ohio state parks, honor Passport America from Sunday through Wednesday nights for half-price camping in order to help boost business during the week.

We pulled into Caesar Creek shortly after noon. Caesar Creek, like most Ohio state parks, has only electric hookups. There are spigots about every 8 or 10 sites where you can fill your fresh water tank.

The electrical hookups are 20/30 amp. When Margery made our reservations for this stop, however, she noticed a number of the sites have been designated as tent sites. When we arrived, we saw sections where the electrical boxes had stickers on them that said "20 amp only." Paul's theory is some of the underground electrical cables for the 30-amp circuits have gone bad, and budget shortages have prevented replacing them. Therefore, the 30-amp service to those sites has been shut off the sites are only used for tenters. The tent sites are clearly indicated on the reservation web page, so you don't have to worry about arriving to find out you only have 20 amps.

The roads and pads at Caesar Creek are paved. Most of the pads are rather short, and some of them also have a bit of a slope from front to back. The one we had this time was a little low in back, but at least we didn't have to put blocks under the rear wheels like we have had to do on a couple of occasions at Caesar Creek.

Our site at Caesar Creek State Park

Although Caesar Creek is usually quiet during the week, it is close to both Cincinnati and Dayton, and it can be very crowded and zooy on holiday weekends. The size of the crowd varies on regular weekends during the summer, but the campground is usually nearly full. This time, however, the campground was only about half full. The next photo shows some of our neighboring sites, and you can get an idea of the size of the crowd. The campground emptied out on Sunday, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves the rest of our stay.

The campground was about half full on the weekend.

The weather has been getting a little cooler as we head north, and a cold front went through just before we got to Caesar Creek. That was a good thing because we only had 30-amp electric. Daytime highs were predicted to be in the 70s to low 80s, and the lows were supposed to be in the 50s and 60s. When we got up on Saturday morning, it almost felt like fall.

The fact that there are several large flea markets in the area is another thing we like about Caesar Creek. We used to go to two or three of them on a weekend when we had a stick house. Now we only go to one or two. After breakfast on Saturday, we headed to Caesar Creek Flea Market, which is located only about 5 miles from the campground down at the interstate exit.

Caesar Creek Flea Market has both indoor and outdoor vendors, and they have a mix of new and used merchandise. We weren't aware of it until we arrived, but the flea market had a fire back in March that damaged part of the indoor area. Fortunately, the fire was extinguished relatively quickly, so the fire damage was limited to a fairly small area. Unfortunately, smoke spread throughout the entire indoor area, and all 7 buildings had to be closed for cleaning and restoration.

Immediately after the fire, the market owners contacted the vendors and offered them all an outdoor space at no cost until the buildings could be restored and reopened. The outdoor portion of the market was only closed for one weekend following the fire.

Building 1, which was the farthest from the area of the fire, was reopened in May, and Buildings 2 and 3 were just reopened in late July. They expect the remaining 4 buildings to open within another month or so.

We first headed down the covered outdoor area toward the far end of the market. This is where most of the indoor vendors have temporarily relocated, and we recognized some of them from previous visits to the flea market. It was a cool morning so there weren't too many customers in the outdoor area yet.

Covered outdoor area at Caesar Creek Flea Market

When we got to the far end of the market, we couldn't see any fire damage apparent from the outside of the buildings, but we could see dumpsters between the buildings. We also saw where work has been going on inside.

We headed back toward the three buildings that were open and worked our way through those. The inside looked nice and bright after the renovations. Everything has been cleaned up and repainted, and all the pegboard dividers between the booths had been replaced.

Margery stopped at her favorite used book vendor. He used to have a large booth that encompassed 7 stalls, but now he had one temporary stall in the recently reopened Building 3.

Margery checking out used books

Margery found several books by one of her favorite authors. Even though she has a Kindle reader, she still buys some hard-copy books because not everything is available in Kindle format. She was happy to be able to support one of her favorite vendors.

Paul stopped at a vendor in Building 1 to check out electrical connectors, tools and hardware. He didn't find anything he couldn't live without, so we escaped without making a purchase.

Paul contemplates buying some electrical connectors

In addition to the indoor areas and a covered, outdoor area, there are also large vendor areas in the parking lot. After finishing up inside, we headed there next. By this time, it had warmed up significantly (Paul was wishing he had worn shorts), and the outdoor area was fairly busy.

Outdoor vendor area

The outdoor area also has a food service area. There was a very good bluegrass band playing when we walked by on our way back to the car.

Bluegrass band in the outdoor food area

After the flea market, we headed back to the campground for an afternoon of relaxation watching the Olympics. On Sunday, it was more relaxation watching the NASCAR race and more Olympics including the closing ceremonies in the evening. We also enjoyed watching the campground empty out as the weekend warriors headed back home.

Other than the flea market, we didn't have any activities planned for Caesar Creek. We drove to nearby Lebanon, OH on Monday to stop at Walmart and Kroger. Kroger is Margery's favorite grocery chain, and the one in Lebanon is particularly nice. It recently moved into much larger building that used to be a K-Mart.

On Tuesday, we had to run out to Lowe's in Wilmington to get materials for Paul to make a new tie-out chain for Freeway. The maintenance crew ran over the one we had with their mower while we were out on Monday and chopped it into little pieces. We use a custom-made tie-out chain that is shorter and lighter weight than the standard ones that are available because Freeway is so small.

Paul puttered around doing a couple of maintenance items on the car and the motor home, but we spent most of the rest of our time at Caesar Creek relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet. One of the advantages to an almost-empty campground is the opportunity to see wildlife. Paul saw a doe and her two fawns walk by at the end of the road on a couple of mornings; and on Wednesday evening, they paid a visit to the site next to us. We watched them graze for several minutes before they moved on.

Doe and two fawns

On Thursday morning, we packed up, hitched up the car, made a stop at the dump station and headed out to our next destination. We'll tell you where that was in our next post.

Holmes County, OH

Berlin, OH - Events of Wednesday, May 23 to Monday, May 29, 2012

Holmes County is Ohio's Amish area, and it has the nation's largest concentration of Amish. This is one of our favorite places in the entire country because we like the picturesque farms, the family atmosphere, the friendly people and the good food. It tends to be a little less crowded than either the Amish areas in Indiana or in eastern Pennsylvania.

When we go to Ohio Amish country, we always stay at Scenic Hills RV Park in Berlin, OH. Scenic Hills has all full-hookup sites. Some are pull-throughs, and some are back-ins. The campground has no bathroom/shower facilities so all RVs must be self-contained. Some sites have 30-amp electric, and some have 30/50 amps. They do have a small laundry as well as guest rooms if RVers want to spend time with their non-rving friends.

The roads are paved and the pads are gravel. There are sites on three levels. The sites on the upper and lower levels have grass between them, and the sites on the center level where the office is located are all gravel.

Our site at Scenic Hills RV

There is a lumber mill next to the RV park, and there is sometimes some noise from the equipment at the mill and from the backup beepers of the fork lifts at the mill during the week, so we usually like to get a site on the lower lever because we think the noise is less. The mill doesn't operate on weekends. The good thing about having a lumber mill next door is the campground gets cuttings from the mill to provide free fire wood to the campers.

The campground wasn't very crowded when we first arrived shortly after noon on Wednesday. There were RVs scattered about the campground and there was a small cluster of 6 or 8 RVs in the row in front of us. The campground was completely filled for the holiday weekend, however.

A view of some of the sites in the row in front of us

There is free Wi-Fi that has good coverage and that initially seemed to be as fast as our Verizon 3G. The Wi-Fi did slow down as the campground filled, but we used the campground system most of our stay because we had occasional trouble getting online with Verizon. Not only that, but we were running well over the 5GB data limit on our Verizon plan. With all our research and blogging, we usually do run over 5GB, and every extra gigabyte of data (or fraction thereof) costs us another $10, so we try to use free Wi-Fi whenever we can to minimize the overage.

By the time we got to Scenic Hills and set up, Margery decided she didn't feel like making lunch or cooking dinner, so we went to Der Dutchman Restaurant in nearby Walnut Creek for lupper. We knew our stay in Berlin was going to be hard on our diets, especially after several celebrations in Pittsburgh just a few days before.

Der Dutchman in Walnut Creek

We both had the salad bar. Salad itself isn't bad for our diets; it's all the sugar in the salad dressings and in all the accompaniments like three-bean salad, rolls with apple butter, potato salad, and pickled beets that are the problem.

Margery at the salad bar at Der Dutchman

On Thursday, we drove around the area enjoying the beautiful spring scenery and making a few shopping stops. We stopped at Walnut Creek Cheese for some bulk herbs and spices and at Winesburg Meats for some beef snack sticks for Paul. The beef sticks are shaped like Slim Jims with a flavor that is a cross between Slim Jims and summer sausage.

Winesburg Meats

We also stopped at R.W. Leather for a new, smaller belt for Paul that fits better since his weight loss. R.W. Leather is run by an Amishman who makes the belts from high quality harness leather.

There is a pet supply store across from the campground where we went to look for a new dog toy for Freeway. He keeps tearing apart the cheap ones from Walmart. We're hoping the new one we got him will last longer.

There happened to be a western store in the same complex, and Paul was able to get a second new belt to replace the western-style belt he had that was too big. Margery's old belts are also getting too big, and she got a new one at the western store, too.

We did our weekly cleaning of the motor home on Friday morning and then went out to Walmart in neraby Millersburg to pick up a few things. When we came back, Paul was checking his wallet to determine his cash situation because many of the smaller businesses in this area and the vendors at the flea markets we planned to go to the following day are cash only. He absent-mindedly placed a couple of bills on the floor beside him. When he went to pick the bills up, one of them was missing. A quick search revealed the thief hiding under the chair.

Thief caught in the act

Lora and J. Michael arrived Friday afternoon and got set up several sites away from us down at the end of the row. We went down to greet them, then we had dinner together back at our rig.

Friday dinner at our rig

On Saturday morning, it was back to Der Dutchman for their breakfast buffet that we all love so much. There are scrambled eggs with several things that can be added to them like fried onions, mushrooms, cheese and green peppers. There are also several kinds of potatoes, sausage gravy and biscuits, fried mush, pancakes, French toast sticks, two kinds of sausage, bacon, fresh fruit salad, frozen fruit slush, several kinds of pudding, cinnamon rolls, and much more.

After breakfast, we drove a short distance to the east of Der Dutchman to the Walnut Creek Flea Market. The flea market has mostly new items.

Entrance to the Walnut Creek Flea Market

The area has two similar flea markets. The second is a few miles to the west of the Walnut Creek Flea Market and a short distance past the entrance to Scenic Hills RV Park in Berlin. In fact, we could see the Holmes County Flea Market from our site. We couldn't very well go to the Walnut Creek Flea Market and skip the one that is right next to the campground, so we went there next.

Like the first flea market we went to, the Holmes County Flea Market has mostly new merchandise, and most of it has a country flair to it.

Margery checks out country-themed decorative items at the Holmes County Flea Market

Wendell August Forge, which manufactures hammered aluminum giftware, has a large store in Berlin. Lora and J. Michael needed a couple of wedding gifts, so we went to Wendell August Forge after we walked around the second flea market.

Wendell August store in Berlin, OH

Lora checks out a possible gift idea.

From Wendell August it was back to the RV park where we relaxed a while then had a delicious dinner of marinated, grilled chicken and zucchini pancakes at Lora and J. Michael's campsite.

With most businesses in the area closed on Sunday, we took time to relax. After we shared another dinner, it was too hot for a campfire so we played a couple of games around the picnic table and read.

Lora and J. Michael stayed over Monday night so they could avoid traveling on the holiday. On Monday morning, we all went to Lehman's Hardware in Kidron to look around. Lehman's sells non-electric appliances, stoves, canning supplies, oil lamps, farm implements, and other products that cater to the Amish.

Lehman's Hardware

Inside Lehman's, there is a mixture of antique tools and implements on display and new merchandise for sale, and it's often hard to distinguish between the two.

Inside Lehman's Hardware

Trying on hats at Lehman's

Wood-burning pizza oven at Lehman's

After Lehman's. we stopped at Heini's Cheese Chalet. They make most of their own cheese on the premesis, and you can watch it being made if you arrive at the right time. Samples of most of the cheeses are available, and there is a slow-moving line around the showroom (especially on Saturdays) as people shuffle along tasting cheese. Fotunately, it wasn't very crowded when we were there on Monday, so we were able to make our way around the samples fairly quickly. Lora bought some delicious sharp Swiss and sharp cheddar.

Margery contemplates buying some cheese

We relaxed on Monday afternoon, then went back to Der Dutchman for an early dinner. In addition to the salad bar, they also have a hot buffet, which is what we all had. It has broasted chicken, pan-fried chicken, ham loaf, sweet and sour chicken, roast beef, fried fish, sweet and sour meat balls, mashed potatoes, stuffing, noodles, sweet potato casserole, hash brown casserole, several kinds of vegetables, and more. The price of $13.49 also includes the regular salad bar and a dish of soft-serve ice cream for dessert with your choice of topping. Our diets were out the window, especially with all the starches.

We had a great time with Lora and J. Michael in Pittsburgh and then in Berlin. We're so glad we took the detour to help celebrate Lora's Mary Kay success, and we're glad we were able to get reservations at Scenic Hills to spend Memorial Day with them. As they headed east to go home the following morning, we headed off toward the south. We'll tell you where we went in our next post.

Change in Plans

Pittsburgh, PA - Events of Tuesday, May 15 to Friday, May 18, 2012

The plans for our spring and summer travel that we made before we left Florida at the end of March were to head to New Orleans after spending about 6 weeks in Summerdale, AL. From New Orleans, we were going to meander northward up the Mississippi River stopping at a few new locations and at several of our old, favorite haunts before taking our time as we made our way east to the Pittsburgh area for family visits and our annual doctor and dentist appointments in the fall.

However, we got word about two weeks before the end of our stay in Summerdale that our daughter, Lora, who is a Mary Kay Beauty Consultant, achieved her goal and met all the requirements to become an Independent Sales Director for Mary Kay. To become a director, she had to recruit the required number of consultants to her team, and the team had to meet the initial sales goals set forth by headquarters.

Lora's debut as a director was scheduled for Monday, May 21 in Pittsburgh. Less than 2% of all Mary Kay Consultants become directors, so her accomplishment is quite a feat. We are so proud of her. We didn't want to miss celebrating her achievement which takes so much self motivation and hard work, so we rearranged our schedule so we could detour to Pittsburgh to attend the event where Lora would debut as a director.

As we have mentioned before, we usually don't travel more than 4 hours a day, and we usually don't travel more than two days in a row. However, we didn't want to cut our time in Summerdale short, so we made an exception for our trek to Pittsburgh and traveled 4 days straight. We tried to keep our travel time as close to 4 hours a day as we could, but we ended up traveling almost 6 hours the first day before our planned stop at Cullman RV Park in Cullman, AL.

Cullman RV Park has all full-hookup, pull-through sites. The space between the sites is fairly decent for a private campground, and most sites are nice and long so you don't have to unhook if you're only staying one night.

Our extra-long pull-through site at Cullman RV

Some of the other sites at Cullman RV

The campground is a couple of miles from the interstate on a dead-end road, so it is pretty quiet. You can barely hear the faint whine of the traffic off in the distance late at night when everything else is very still.

When we called Cullman RV from the road to make sure they had a site available, they warned us to follow their signs after we turned off the main road. Apparently, most GPS units are like ours and want you to go down a narrow, gravel road to get to the campground. The gravel road is a shorter distance, but it is very narrow with lots of overhanging trees - not a good idea with a big RV. The campground signs have you follow the paved road. The paved road is a little rough, but it is better than the gravel road.

Most of the interior roads at Cullman RV are paved, but a few are gravel. All are quite narrow, but at least there are no trees or other obstructions near the roads. If you have to swing wide to make a turn and get over onto the grass a little it's no big deal.

The pads are gravel, and there is nice grass between the sites and shade trees here and there. There were quite a few of what looked to be permanent residents at the lower end of the campground, but all the sites were neat and well kept.

We're not sure about the Wi-Fi at Cullman RV. Sometimes we could get on, and sometimes it asked for a password. The connection was fairly fast when we first got there in the afternoon, but it got real slooooow in the evening. We ended up just using our Verizon Broadband.

We hit the road fairly early the next morning because we had a 5-hour drive to our second overnight stop, and we also knew we would loose an hour going from Central Time Zone into Eastern. Our second stop was at Grandma's RV Camping in Shepherdsville, KY about 20 miles south of Louisville. We stayed there last October when we visited Louisville.

Grandma's has about half back-ins and half pull-throughs. Although they are a decent length, the sites (especially the pull-throughs) are quite close together. The roads are paved, as are the small patios; but the patios aren't very well placed and therefore aren't very useful. The sites themselves are all gravel (the gravel is fresh, clean and plentiful) with no grass. There are full hookups with 30/50-amp electric. There is supposed to be free Wi-Fi, but it required a password. Since we forgot to get the password when we checked in, we just used our Verizon Broadband. The utilities are also toward the rear of the site, which is not bad for 5th wheels; but with a motor home, we needed all 30 feet of our sewer hose.

Our site at Grandma's RV

The view down our row shows how close the sites are.

Grandma's is conveniently located right off I-65, and that means there is quite a bit of traffic noise. Fortunately, we didn't hear as many trains this time as we did last fall.

We hit the road fairly early again the third morning, but not as early as the first two mornings. Our drive was a little shorter this time at about 3½ hours. We were originally going to stop at Deer Creek State Park to the southwest of Columbus, OH, but we decided at the last minute we would be better off having full hookups and a pull-through site so we could save time on the morning of the last leg of our journey to Pittsburgh by not having to take time to go to the dump station and hook up the toad.

We found Jackson Lake Campground in Canal Winchester, OH a little to the southeast of Columbus. It is a little far from the interstate (about 10 miles), but it is the only campground we could find near where we wanted to stop. The upside to being far from the interstate is no traffic noise.

Our site at Jackson Lake Campground

Jackson Lake Campground has apparently gotten some negative reviews on rvparkreviews.com due to poor maintenance, particularly the rest rooms. However, Jackson Lake has new owners who are trying to fix things up. The property is very large so there is still a lot to do, but they have apparently made progress.

The campground was nice and peaceful when we were there in the middle of the week; but there looked to be a lot of seasonals, so it could be a bit zooey on weekends.

Some of the seasonal sites at Jackson Lake

The sites at Jackson Lake are fairly large, but some have side-by-side hookups. Since it was during the week and it was before Memorial Day, we had the place pretty much to ourselves except for some of the seasonals.

We thought the nightly rate of $35 was a bit high (even with full hookups) for the caliber of the campground; but on the other hand, Ohio state parks charge $27 a night for electric only.

There are tent sites with no hookups and RV sites with full hookups. Some sites have 30-amp electric, and some have 50-amp electric. The ones with 50 amps don't have 30-amp receptacles at all. The roads are dusty gravel, and there are remnants of old asphalt paving near the entrance.

The sites in the center grassy section can be used as pull-throughs if there is no one in the site behind. The seasonal sites are around the perimeter and are in the shade and are dirt and gravel. Wi-Fi is available for a fee. There are also rental cabins, a lodge that is in the process of being remodeled, a swimming pool, a rec hall, horseshoe pits, a volleyball net, frisbee golf, and picnic pavilions.

In the evening we took Freeway for a walk over to the fishing lake then settled in for an evening of TV.

Jackson Lake Campground fishing lake

We got on the road the final morning of our trek to Pittsburgh around 9:00 AM, and it took a little less than 4 hours to get to Lora and J. Michael's house. We will only be in Pittsburgh for a few days because Lora and J. Michael are going camping for Memorial Day, and we need to vacate the RV pad beside their garage so they can bring their trailer back to pack it up for the weekend. The good news is we'll be camping with them over Memorial Day. We'll let you know where that is, and we'll give you an update on our activities in Pittsburgh in our next post.

Caesar Creek State Park, OH

Wilmington, OH - Events of Tuesday, Sept. 27 to Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011 

From Pittsburgh, we headed to Caesar Creek State Park in Wilmington, OH near Waynesville. Caesar Creek has always been a favorite campground of ours. The grassy sites are huge, and the roads and pads are paved. Caesar Creek has only electric hookups, and they are all 30 amp. Water spigots where you can fill your fresh water tanks are located throughout the campground. The next photo shows our site at Caesar Creek.

Caesar Creek is usually almost empty and very quiet on weekdays, especially after Labor Day, as you can see from the next photo showing the view down the road from our site.

There were a few more sites taken in the non-reserveable loop, and the campground was about 2/3 full on the weekend; but there were only a few other campers most of the rest of the time.

Along with some of the other Ohio State Parks, Caesar Creek honors Passport America for half-price camping on Sunday through Wednesday nights to try to attract more visitors during those slower days. However, the campground is usually filled on summer weekends; and on holiday weekends, it can get pretty zooy.

After all the running around we did while in Pittsburgh, it was nice to relax a while. But we didn't just sit around the whole time. Since the campground was almost empty, Paul hooked up a hose to the spigot near our site and scrubbed the road grime from our fabric tow shield. Margery went to Willmington for a haircut, she worked on menus for our new Belly Fat Cure low carb/low sugar diet, and we made two stops Walmart to pick up some groceries.

Speaking of our new diet, we casually followed some of the general guidelines of the diet for about two weeks back when we were staying in Berlin, OH, and we have been adhering more strictly to the rules for about the last two weeks (with the exception of eating out three times while in Pittsburgh). We have both lost about 5 pounds already. That is an average of a little over a pound a week, which we think is an excellent rate - not too fast, but fast enough to be encouraging.

Caesar Creek Flea Market is about 10 minutes from Caesar Creek State Park; and when we're in the area, we usually head there on Saturday after having the breakfast buffet at Der Dutchman in nearby Waynesville. The restaurant in Waynesville was part of the Der Dutchman chain of restaurants we wrote about recently when we visited Berlin, OH. Unfortunately, the Waynesville restaurant had a devastating fire about a year ago, and the owners decided not to rebuild.

Saturday was cold and rainy anyway, so with Der Dutchman gone, we had no excuse to venture out. Therefore, we decided to wait until Sunday to go to the Flea Market. Sunday was still cold (it went down to 37º overnight), but it was sunny, and the wind had died down.

Caesar Creek Flea Market is an indoor/outdoor market that is open year round. The outdoor vendors sell mostly used household merchandise and collectibles like glassware. We walked over to see how many vendors there were, and the photo below shows about a third of the vendors there. Since they were kind of sparse and scattered all over the parking lot, we decided to skip the outdoor section.

As we started through the first building, Paul stopped to check out some bungee cords that had nice snap hooks on the ends that would be less likely to slip off than standard hooks.

Paul didn't buy any bungee cords, but he ended up buying some sandpaper and a small polishing disc for our aluminum wheels. Margery scanned a couple of used book stalls, but much to Paul's relief didn't find anything interesting.

In front of the flea market buildings, there is a long, covered row of outdoor vendors that we walked through on our way back to the car. At the end, there was a vendor with dozens of colorful pumpkins and gourds. The scene was very fitting for a cool, fall morning.

After the flea market, we went back to the motor home to watch the Steeler game and the NASCAR race. We didn't watch the Steeler game long - they played even worse than the score indicates (Texans 17 - Steelers 10). We enjoyed watching the campground empty out a whole lot more than watching the game.

We relaxed the rest of our time at Caesar Creek. We had a couple of nice sunsets, but one evening was particularly beautiful.

We previously said, the speed with which we head south will depend on the speed with which the weather cools off. In spite of several cool days in Berlin, several more in Pittsburgh, and a good bit of even cooler weather at Caesar Creek, the 10-day forecast shows a definite warming trend. Therefore, we will be doing a little more meandering and a little less speeding. We'll tell you about where we went in our next post.