Versailles State Park Grass

We stayed eight days at Versailles State Park, leaving Tuesday Sept 13. While we were there, my guys showed up each Monday to handle the yard work. All I had to do was sit and watch. The guys seem to show up wherever we stay so I hope they keep up with the grass cutting. We are now at the FMCA  park on Round Bottom Road in Newtown, Ohio. The guys showed up right after we arrived and cut grass and weed trimmed again. This happens every week and I don't even ask them to do it! 

Someone moved my fire ring, the guys moved it back

Cleaning up

All I can do is watch because we don't own a lawn mower

FMCA for the next five days. Check the grass

Rose Island

Charlestown State Park is in southern Indiana in Clark County. The park borders the Ohio River. The park land was a part of the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant (INAAP), opened in 1940 for producing war ammunition and abandoned in 1992. I would love to have access to the old property. It's a huge place and many of the old buildings are still standing. I also discovered the old gunpowder bunkers, east of the park. The next time we are here, I will be attempting a drive to that area, access looks open on Google Earth. Check Google Earth for a view of the property. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Army_Ammunition_Plant for details. 

We never know what will suddenly appear when we go to a new area. We discovered a special tour of Rose Island was available during the Labor Day weekend. It is inside the state park property, located on the Ohio River. The tour was quite a hike down a 1/2 mile steep paved hill, round trip about three miles. We walked out and up the steep hill in the dark on Saturday evening. Details about Rose Island can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Island_(amusement_park). 

Ohio River overlook at the south end of Charlestown State Park

Our friends Doug & Marla were staying in their motor home next to us

Abandoned water pumps on the river provided water the to ammunition plant

Entering the Rose Island trail

It became very steep, descending about 250 feet to the park entrance. It became very steep as we went on down the path. Downhill was hard on the knees. Walking back up in the dark was like a treadmill test. We both passed OK.

This bridge was added in 2012, moved from another county

Bridge dedication plaque

Fourteen Mile Creek

Entering Rose Island with over 100 people on the tour

Our DNR guide did a great job. The concrete was a large ice water cooler. Water came from the well and they had an ice plant on site.

Original arches entering from the west end

This was the river landing where the steamboats brought people to Rose Island

The hotel was near the river boat landing, completely washed away in the 1937 flood.

Rose Island was wiped out by the 1937 flood and abandoned after that.
The ammunition plant took the property in 1940

Moon Over Winton Woods

We are back at Winton Woods site 1-F in Hamilton County, Ohio, staying until August 31. The heat seems to be turned off for a while so a much better week is ahead. There are several people and places we need to visit while we are here. Visitors are always welcome at our motor home. Park in the lot across from the campground office. Site 1-F is a short walk, the first site on the right just beyond the driveway gate.

I need to do a lot of work on our Jeep Cherokee to get it ready to tow behind our motor home. That work will take a few days next week. The Jeep is not easy to add the tow wiring cable and break away switch so I had to scrap the original plan and order different parts, more money. Anyone buying a Jeep Cherokee for a TOAD, ask me for details to save yourself some time and aggravation.

Markland Dam on Saturday Evening

This is our 4th week at Follow The River RV Resort. Not much going on here but it sure has been hot. We have been hiding in the RV several days to escape the heat. Today was better, still hot sun but the air was much better. I did some work at my daughters house between the hot days. Distance to Vevay is 8 miles, Rising Sun is 22 miles, Lawrenceburg is 35 miles, Carrollton KY is 18 miles, Madison is 24 miles. Belterra Casino is about 3 miles north and we are NOT going to the casino.

Since we are somewhat in the country, we have driven our new Jeep over 1200 miles since July 16th. Just miles, not doing much since not much to do here near the resort. We will be leaving here on August 17, my birthday, heading back to Winton Woods near Cincinnati for 15 days. During that time, I need to finish the wiring on the Jeep so it's ready to tow behind the motor home.

Markland Dam on Saturday evening

Sunset by the dam

Winton Woods, Jeep Cherokee, Follow the River

We have been in Indiana since we left Tennessee, staying at the Versailles and Brookville State Parks. Last week we stayed in Winton Woods, a very nice Hamilton County Ohio park. The rate for full hookup is less than the Indiana state parks like Brookville. 

We could not stay the weekend at Winton Woods since all sites were booked so Steve Muncey invited us to stay in the Mobilcomm parking lot Friday and Saturday. Thanks Steve. I worked there for 42.54 years and it's about two miles from Winton Woods. We ran our generator to stay cool during the two days and used some diesel but otherwise no other expense. The only excitement was the local police banging on our door about 11:15 pm Saturday night, probably thinking were were drug dealers or something. I think there were three police cars surrounding us so we must have looked like very bad people. I talked my way out of a trip to jail and they left.

On Friday we met John and Bev Durkin for dinner at Cracker Barrel and had a good time discussing old times where we both worked. John loves to play golf and Bev just enjoys being retired. On Saturday evening we had company at the motorhome and again had a nice dinner at Cracker Barrel with Dan and Carolyn Roark. We met them at Versailles two years ago and have been friends since. They have a large 5th wheel RV so we always have plenty of RV things to talk about. Sorry, no photos of them, I was not thinking of that at the time.

Saturday morning we drove to Batesville Chrysler Dodge Jeep to pick up our new Jeep Cherokee. We have the trusty old Jeep Wrangler sold in Lawrenceburg. The Cherokee purchase was debated for months but we could not find another vehicle that met our requirements such as 4 wheel drive, off road capability, towing all wheels on the ground and a more comfortable ride. We have known our salesman Paul Hildebrand for many years and knew he would give us a straight deal, which he did. Thanks Paul, we really like the Cherokee.

The only photo taken in Winton Woods was at sunset. It's a bit dark but our motor home is on the other side of the pine trees. We love the tall pine trees behind the main campground, just don't want to park under them and get a pine sap bath. The air is filled with pine scent.

Our weekend stay was at Mobilcomm. Steve Muncey had an area blocked off in the parking lot when we arrived Friday afternoon. Steve knows how to welcome us!

No utility hookups but a nice place to park. Our diesel generator kept everything powered up during the day. We ran on battery power at night since we did not need the AC after the sun went down.

The 2004 Wrangler and our new 2016 75th Anniversary Cherokee. The Cherokee has enough features that it can almost drive itself. It will take a few weeks to figure it all out. My cell phone can now do a lot of things and I get reports by email for things like service due, fault codes (hope I don't see any) and it can locate it by GPS. No one should steal this one. The Wrangler just had ignition keys to start it, a transmission and an engine. I really did like the Wrangler but it had to go to a new owner.

Here we are Sunday afternoon at Follow the River about one mile south of Markland Dam and about six miles from Vevay Indiana. Belterra Casino is about three miles north. We will not be going to the casino! This is a very nice RV park. We will be staying here for almost six weeks.

Cumberland Gap & Other Places

Today's drive took us to Cumberland Gap at the Kentucky-Tennessee-Virginia state line. You probably know the story of Danial Boone and the others that found the "gap". The National Park Service operates the park. We drove up to Pinnacle Point that has a great view of Harrogate, TN in the valley south of the gap, the gap itself, the city of Middleboro, Ky to the north and east to the Wilderness Road in Virginia. We walked a path into Virginia to get to the overlook. 

US25E goes through a 4600 foot tunnel under the mountain next to the gap. It's a four lane road started in 1980 and finished in 1996. It looks like it was a huge expensive project. We drove into Kentucky to check out Pine Mountain State Park. The campground was closed and it is just a long ride through the hills, not much else.

Traffic on I-75 south on the way back to our motor home was backed up for miles due to construction. We saw the problem in the morning as we drove north on I-75 so we knew it might still be a problem. Our WAZE software indicated the problem at about 430 pm so we took a detour through Rocky Top Tennessee (you heard of it?) and a few other small towns. If you travel, you need Google maps!

The link to the NPS web site is www.nps.gov/cuga/index.htm

Entering the 4600 foot tunnel from the Tennessee end.

It's a long tunnel and the two southbound lanes are on the other side of the wall on the left.

Daylight at the Kentucky end.

We walked into Virginia on the short path to Pinnacle Point.

The path to the Point.

The Pinnacle Point where you can see three states.

Looking toward Virginia and the Wilderness Road.

The town below is Cumberland Gap TN. Beyond that is US25E southbound and Harrogate TN

The "gap" is below the Pinnacle Point observation area.
The US25E tunnel runs through this mountain. Middleboro Ky is to the right of the mountain.

Leaving the point and who do we see? Could it be Gary Whisman!?!?

The Manhattan Project

Oak Ridge Tennessee

is the home of the Manhattan Project, one of the locations where the atomic bomb was developed. There is plenty of history to see in Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge did not exist until the early 1940's when our government decided we had to see if atomic theory would work to build a bomb. Scientific minds thought it would but the only way to prove it was to build it. 

We visited the museum today but could not get a seat on the daily tour bus that takes you through some of the top secret areas that still exist today. We will try again the next time we are near Oak Ridge. The museum entry was $4.00 each, quite a bargain for what they have in the large building. If you have not heard the story or seen the movie, it's another American historical event that I would compare to the Moon landings in the late 1960's. It's a one or two day stop to see it all. Here is the link www.nps.gov/mapr/index.htm so take a look. There are other locations in the country that also worked on the project. We hope to visit all of them.

Since this museum is science & energy, the first thing we found was this car "printed" by a large 3D printer. It's a real car with engine and all. This car may have been on a TV show about the printing technology last year .

There were three separate areas constructed for the project. There were 75,000 people living in the area for the project. The government took over the land and constructed everything. The construction project is a story in itself, all completed in less than three years. The museum has movies and many details about the entire project.

A model of the Oak Ridge "graphite reactor".

An early electron gun.

More early equipment

Still more and I did not get every detail about all of the exhibits.

If you know history, you have heard of the Enola Gay that dropped the first atom bomb on Japan. The second bomb dropped a week later caused Japan to surrender and ended World War II. That was the purpose of the Manhattan Project. 

Today, the nuclear waste is a big problem. There were examples of how they contain the waste. I did communications work as a contractor at Fernald in Ohio along with other employees where I worked. Fernald was called a "feed materials" plant which handled highly radioactive material. I watch the waste containment dome work from the main control room while I installed new communications equipment. That day had lots of people very nervous as they pumped foam under the dome to keep them from collapsing. Fernald was closed several years ago and cleaned up, now a nature preserve.