Ohio - Days 19 & 20

Scioto Trail State Park
Sunday, 19 and Monday, 20 May 2019

I spent both these days in the campground, the name of which I think is pronounced sy-OH-toh.

It's a fairly small campground, and when I was choosing a camping site online, I chose one at the beginning of the campground, rather than one of those deeper in.  I've learned that when I pick a nice spot at the end of a cul-de-sac, and we have to walk past the dogs at all the other campsites just to get somewhere we can walk, it doesn't work.  Both my dogs go nuts when they see other dogs.  I've learned to pick a spot where I can walk past the fewest campsites and still get somewhere where there's room to walk.  And it turned out to be a valid concern because a whole lot of people had dogs, including all those in spaces around us.

In this campground, I was in space #1, near the camp store and the boat ramp and the fishing lake.  It would have been a good spot except that lake turns out to be a very productive fishing spot, and Gracie's fear of little kids has gotten worse.  She now doesn't wait for them to start shrieking or crying; she freaks out and tries desperately to get away when she even sees one, even from a distance.  And little kids like to fish.  So Saturday after we got here and all day Sunday were tough for her on walks.  We didn't get any peace until Monday after most people had left.

most spaces were taken when we arrived Saturday afternoon; this photo was on Monday; the lake is in the background

Oddly, even though by Monday there were only 2 other campers left in the park, there were at least 4 kids, all riding bicycles and yelling at each other as they rode along.  I had to time our walks until they'd gone in to eat supper or something.  Gracie's psychotic.  And there's nothing I can do about it while we're on the road.  Maybe never.

This is an odd little campground.  There's only a very few water spigots, and none at the campsites.  There're no showers.  I couldn't find any TV stations.  We're in a sort of valley so I'm not getting any cell phone reception or wifi reception.  The campground has a wifi signal, so that kept me from cracking up.

Of course there aren't any flush toilets, but the latrines weren't like any I'd seen.They're easily handicap-accessible because the floor of the latrine is the same concrete slab it's sitting on.  There's one toilet inside and it looks like a regular toilet but doesn't flush water.

 On the back side is a port where the pumpout service hooks up.  I didn't see a brand name anywhere.  When I asked the guy from Bud's Septic Tank Cleaning where these are made he didn't know but said they're very common in this part of the state, which seemed to be all he knew.

By Monday, I could extend my right arm a lot more than I had but still had no strength in it.  Good to see I'm improving, though it's a real nuisance not to be doing it faster.  To compensate, when I walk the dogs I hold both leashes together with both hands wrapped around each other, and I hold them up to my chest, both of which make me stronger and able to hang onto the dogs even when they charge at each other and wrestle for a bit.

Brown-headed Cowbird

I saw a flock of black birds that weren't Red-winged Blackbirds so I looked them up.  The only one I could find in the bird book that was the right size and could reasonably be expected to be in Ohio right now is the Brown-Headed Cowbird.

What gave me pause is that I didn't see the brown head on any of them, but it was the only one that could fit, so I guess I was just looking from the wrong angle or in the wrong light. 

It also gave me pause because the bird book says they're parasitic - they're like the Cuckoo and lay their eggs in the nests of other birds.  A female can travel up to 4 miles through woodlands to lay several dozen eggs during a season.  I'm not a fan of this habit because I know Cuckoos can kill the baby birds that belong in that nest and take all the food for itself, which is a pretty ugly thing for a guest to do.  I assume the cowbirds do the same thing. 

What I saw was a flock of at least 9 or 10.  How do they know how to get together if they're not raised with others of their species?

On Monday morning I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go next and suddenly realized next weekend is Memorial Day weekend.  As much as most Americans look forward to their 3-day holiday weekends, that's how much I loathe 3-day holiday weekends.  For those of us who are full-timing RV living (and there are a lot of us), these are a real problem because everybody and his aunt Lillian wants to go camping.

So instead of looking for someplace to stay tomorrow night, I started looking for someplace to stay next Friday-Monday.  And what I learned is that almost every single space with electric hookups in every single Ohio state campground is already reserved.  There were only 2 exceptions: one campground still had 3 spaces available at equestrian sites (completely out of the question because both dogs flip out at the sight of horses), and most campgrounds also had several walk-in sites available.

I couldn't find anywhere that explained the procedure for how walk-in spaces could be allocated so decided I'd better get to a campground fairly early in the day tomorrow to get on a list or whatever it was.  I picked Rocky Fork State Park, a fairly large campground that has spaces available for the next few days and that's within a reasonable distance of Cincinnati, near which are several places I want to visit.  I'll head there tomorrow.

Once the campground here cleared out I was able to walk the dogs more during the daytime (we can go almost anywhere early in the morning, but are more limited the rest of the day).  There's a road on the backside of the campground that the ranger told me leads to a logging road that's closed now, so we walked out that way several times.

Today I saw in 2 separate locations 2 pairs of butterflies - all of them a beautiful glossy blue-black and all perched on the feces of some unknown source sitting on the roadway.  I was glad I saw the butterflies, in fact, because without them I might have stepped in the poop.  Because of this incident I found a funny website that explains butterflies eat poop, which is apparently what these 4 were doing.  mentalfloss.com/7-disgusting-things-butterflies-eat  When I looked closer, trying to figure it out for myself, I saw a whole batch of greeny-silvery flies crawling around on the feces.  Odd to think 2 little piles of poop could generate so much interest.