Ohio - Day 25 - Serpent Mound

Rocky Fork State Park
Saturday, 25 May 2019

I've developed a plan for how to give the dogs some exercise without risking serious problems due to the abundant dog population in the campground.  I wake up really early these days anyway, no matter when I went to bed the night before, so I decided to make that an advantage.

Today I took the dogs out for a first walk about 3:45 AM and we walked all around the whole campground (it's about .8 mile).  Then about 5:15 AM I took them back out for another walk all around the whole campground.  So before 6:00 AM we've gotten in more than a mile and a half.  Gives them exercise and chances to poop and plenty of time to sniff what other dogs have done.

We were on the road before 8:30, heading to Serpent Mound.

today's route

Serpent Mound is the one thing I really have looked forward to seeing in Ohio.  I read about it and saw photos of it when I was doing research during the years before this trip and was fascinated.  So today's trip was important to me.  And I wasn't disappointed.

I was really lucky.  First, because I left the campground so early and had such a short distance to go (about 30 miles, though the online directions from both search engines sent me down roads I shouldn't have been on), I got there before almost anybody else.  Second, it started raining when I pulled in to the parking lot.  Really raining.  And that may have discouraged some people from coming.  Third, it was a Saturday on the Memorial Day weekend when most people are involved in activities other than visiting ancient Indian sites.  All of which meant I could take the dogs with me on the trail and not have to worry about masses of other dogs and people.

I'm going to start by including a link to wikipedia, because this page shows drawings of the whole mound.  en.wikipedia.org/Serpent_Mound  There are photos online that show the whole thing, but they've got copyright restrictions and I can't use them.  Here are the photos I took.

a view of most of the mound from the viewing tower

I probably could have seen the whole effigy if I'd had the nerve to walk up to the top of the viewing tower; as it was I could only go as far as the lower level for this photo.

The mound is 1,348' long with a walkway that encircles it (where the dogs and I were).  It's only 3' high in most places, and my second photo is my attempt to show the height.  On the other hand, the land it sits on isn't level, so the walkway around one side is substantially lower than around the other in places.  They think it might have originally been as much as 5' high and diminished by time, erosion or vandalism.

a few of the serpent's bend from the walkway

It was made, as the burial mounds were, by people hauling dirt one basket at a time.

They've learned from excavations that it's definitely not a burial mound and they know it's the largest serpent effigy in the world.  Beyond that, they don't know for certain much about it.

For instance, they originally dated it at around 300 BC because of nearby burial mounds from that time.  Then carbon dating showed it to date from 1070 AD, so scientists changed their minds about which group of Natives had built it.  More recent carbon dating puts the date back at around 300 BC.  They're running more tests.  So they still don't know for sure.

They also don't know for sure what it depicts.  It's clearly a serpent with a coiled tail.  But the mouth of the serpent is wide open and an oval shape is partly inside.  They think the oval shape is an egg, though some think it's the sun and others have still more ideas. 

Regardless of what it depicts scientists haven't decided what its significance is.  Some say the head+egg line up perfectly with the summer solstice sunset - but don't say why the sunset would have been chosen or why the summer solstice.  Others have decided the snake's undulations coincide with the summer solstice sunrise, the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox sunrise though, if so, it would be an unusual amalgam of astronomical data into one effigy.

And so forth.

But when you can have it mostly to yourself, as the dogs and I did, it is still a figure of wonder.  Or, as the one other person who was there when we were said to me as he was leaving, "A lot of mystery."  And that's the way it feels.

It's been designated a National Historic Landmark.  And it's been nominated for UNESCO's World Heritage List.  If it's chosen, it will be slotted in with Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Great Wall of China, among others.

By the time we were leaving, the rain had stopped, the sun was getting hot, and the day was very humid.  Quite a few groups of people had showed up and I was really grateful for our early start.

Along the routes both for coming and for going there are plenty of those horse-and-buggy highway signs, and for good reason: I was passing through more Amish country and actually met 2 of these outfits on the road.  Narrow road, no shoulder, so I slowed down so as not to cause them trouble.

I kept having to dodge piles of horse manure in the roadway, so I knew there were some very healthy horses in the vicinity.

I passed a field where a boy dressed in typical Amish boy attire was hauling something in a wheelbarrow.  He waved at me.

Actually, I got stared at quite a bit because, as I said, I really didn't have any business being where I was.  It would have been a little weird for a regulation passenger car to be driving around this area - very narrow country roads through farmland.  And though the signs told me I was coming into this town or that, I didn't even see a grouping of houses at these places.  Very rural.  But attractive.  Rolling hills.

Maybe because it was so rural, or because we were out so early, there were dozens of birds flying from one side of the road to the other.  And they weren't putting any altitude into it - they were somewhere about the height of my front grill.  It was hard for me to avoid them.

I learned that the small town of Belfast has a lodge of the Knights of Pythias.  I don't remember if I've mentioned seeing these before or not but, if not, here's a link to more information about them.  en.wikipedia.org/Knights_of_Pythias  You might want to check it out because they include the oath of membership, and it's actually what you might call remarkable.

We stopped in Hillsboro on the way back to the campground so I could walk the dogs again before we met up with the crowd of campers.  This time I parked next to the Masonic Lodge and learned that this year they're celebrating their 200th anniversary.

Just down the street I saw several law offices (we were near the courthouse), including one for F. Allyce Horne and one a block later for K. Danielle Whitt, showing that women can be just as silly and pretentious as men (something I'd hoped not to know).

Sure enough, back at the campground things were absolutely hectic outside our RV with people walking their dogs or their babies in strollers or just strolling along themselves.  And kids and wheeled vehicles of various types everywhere.  Once again, I managed to get the dogs out on a short bedtime walk at about 6:15 without any trouble.  And once again, I closed everything up and turned on the AC.  It was clear everyone was having fun, but I'd think they'd have more experience with nature if they'd stayed in their own driveways back home.