Wednesday, 29 May 2019
East Fork is a huge campground with many loops for campsites, each loop separated from the others by walls of bushes and trees. Having spent so many months with bare branches now, I'm finding all this greenery to be a nuisance because I can't see what's ahead of us when we're walking - can't prepare if a dog's coming around the corner, for instance. It's very pretty, though.
On one of our early walks this morning, we came around a corner into a camping loop and I felt like I'd walked - wham! - into a wall of scent - honeysuckle - one of my very favorite scents. This is apparently prime honeysuckle season, and there are wild, heavily scented vines of blossoms all over these Ohio campgrounds. It's great.
I'm also seeing lots of Cardinals in this campground. There must be more nesting than just the one that was attacking us yesterday - and he was hanging around this morning checking us out again - because I saw mostly males and assume the females are sitting on nests.
 |
| today's route along the Ohio River |
I saw a sign left over from last year advertising the Wheat Ridge Old Thyme Herb Fair and Harvest Festival coming in October in West Union, OH. I looked it up and learned it's an annual event, showcasing herbs and herbal products. But there are also hundreds of crafters and artisans and classes and a pumpkin cannon (lots of fun I'm sure but what a waste of good food).
I heard on NPR that there's a lot of hullabaloo because a Wegman's Grocery is opening in Brooklyn, NYC. I guess Brooklyn is very excited about it. Wegman's, you may recall, is the store I was excited to discover when I was snowed in last year in Erie, PA. Ohio's right next door to Pennsylvania and I can't understand why there's not a Wegman's at least in Cleveland.
Today the weather forecast was for lots of storms but I'd hoped not to be in the vicinity of them. Hoped in vain, as it turns out. There I am, driving down yet another Ohio road that's labeled with a US Route number but in reality is two lanes wide with no shoulders and runs through a very rural area with widely spaced farms and no real towns. Very pretty. But I started to see lightning off on my right - still a distance away, but lightning makes me nervous after living in central Texas for so long.
And the lightning got closer and closer. When I could hear the thunder I counted and learned the lightning was 5 miles away - too close for my comfort. But I couldn't find any place at all for shelter. Just nowhere. I know better than to assume a tree is reasonable protection from lightning and that was all I could find, so I just kept going. Very scary.
I'd just gotten to the small town of Ripley, which was my first destination, when a little rain started coming down. My first stop was the John Parker House in Ripley.
John Parker House
 |
| side 1 |
 |
| side 2 |
 |
| John Parker's House |
Apparently, Mr. Parker is one of the relatively unsung heroes of the abolitionist efforts. Formerly enslaved, he bought his freedom, then helped many others escape. For a little more information on him than is on this sign, you can go to this link. en.wikipedia.org/John_Parker_(abolitionist)
I knew I wouldn't be able to get into the house because I learned online that it's open only on weekends - probably when volunteer docents could be there. A shame because I'm sure they have lots of good information about him and his activities that aren't easily available to me.
When Parker and others brought escaped slaves across the Ohio River (which is immediately across the street from Parker's house), they usually funneled them to the Rankin house up the hill from town.
Rankin House
This is an important historical site, according to the State of Ohio, but the road leading up the hill to it is only 1½ lanes wide with lots of curves, and I worried the whole way up that I'd meet somebody else. When I got to the top, I saw my concern was valid because there was a huge tour bus up there that had brought a bunch of middle-school-aged kids with teachers. Imagine meeting that thing part way along the road.
Because of the kids, the usual tours had been suspended, but there were quite a few signs and displays around explaining who these folks had been.
 |
| info about the Rankins |
 |
| the reconstructed Rankin House |
By the time the state of Ohio noticed that the Rankins had significant national importance because of their Underground Railroad activities, there was nothing left here at the site of their home. Fortunately, there was an extensive document trail that could be used to rebuild the house and reconstruct the family's activities.
There was a strong wind when I took these photos and it was spitting rain, so I didn't walk over to the house where I'd have had to elbow my way around a batch of the teenage students anyway. Later I walked the dogs over there but neglected to take my camera so don't have a photo of just how perfect a view of the Ohio River they had at this house. You can see it sits on the edge of a bluff, and the land slopes fairly quickly straight down to the river. I could easily see a mile in either direction, even with the low clouds. I think the Rankins kept an eye out for river traffic and put a candle in one of their windows to signal to people on the opposite side when it was safe to cross. That hill you see behind the house is actually in Kentucky.
The Rankin family were friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe's family, and they told her of the escaped slave who'd crossed the partly-frozen Ohio River carrying her baby, and that the thin ice cracked under her pursuers, forcing them to return to Kentucky, while she went on to freedom. Stowe incorporated this story into her book Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the girl became the famous character Eliza.
 |
| Just look at this amazing map. |
 |
| the list in black is illustrated in the map at right |
 |
| the numbers are from the list at left |
I'll attach profiles of other Ripley-area folks who helped with the Railroad at the end of this post. It's too much information to put in here.
While I was in the visitor center, it started POURING rain. With the wind blowing so hard, the parking lot looked more like a scene from a storm in Galveston.
I should have used the video ability of my camera to show what was going on here, but the wind that's blowing those trees over is also blowing the rain and creating actual waves in the parking lot.
I decided it would be better for me to get to the RV, even if I got soaked doing it, because I didn't know how Gracie would be taking all this - or the others, for that matter.
It turned out that only one side of me got soaked. I'd put my camera in my purse and put that under my shirt and wrapped my arms around all that to try to keep it dry, and that worked. My shirt was soaked but the purse was only damp and the camera was safe. And the critters were happy to see me.
I hated to but I turned on the generator so I could run the fan and drown out some of the really loud noise the storm was making and fixed us all some lunch. There was, of course, thunder and lightning going on too, so I wasn't going anywhere for a while. I worried a bit about the lightning, but near me in the parking lot - just out of camera range in this photo - was the huge tour bus, so I hoped if lightning were going to strike up on our hill, it'd go for the bus before our little guy. In the end, we were safe.
The storm finally passed over, the kids all came outside and boarded the bus and drove away, and soon after that we left too.
On the road north along the river, we passed Utopia, OH - and maybe it was a utopia for the first settlers, but at present it looks like an impoverished, sparsely-settled farming area. Felicity is about 6 miles down the road; I'd have thought the 2 would be more closely connected.
Pres. U.S. Grant Birthplace
 |
| Grant, as president |
 |
| side 1 |
 |
| side 2 |
 |
| Grant's boyhood home in Point Pleasant, OH |
I'm very sorry to say I was really disappointed in this museum. What's here is really just the furnished house where Grant was born and grew up. The student or intern or whoever the knowledgeable person that was supposed to be there didn't come and, rather than close the museum, an interested local volunteered to help out. He was retired and interested in history and knowledgeable about Civil War battles, but surprisingly knew almost nothing about Grant's presidency, which is what I'd gone there to learn about.
I'm finding I'm not really much interested in seeing where people grew up - it's enough for me to know he grew up in a small one-story house and his father worked hard and succeeded at his tannery business. That's really all I care about for background, unless there's something extraordinary or character-forming that happened.
I'm really more of the Prof. Dumbledore school of thought: it doesn't matter what a person is born but instead it's the choices he or she makes that determine what they grow up to become.
Grant's father reluctantly agreed that Grant would never join his tannery business and sent him to West Point. Grant hated the book learning, but found his subsequent mandatory 4-year active duty assignments enlightening. In the Mexican-American War, he served first under Gen. Zachary Taylor, then under Gen. Winfield Scott; from them, he learned military tactics and leadership skills. When given his own command he served with bravery and distinction.
But he came to believe that that war was wrong because, he thought, its only purpose was to expand America's territory to allow more room to expand slavery. Grant's family was strongly anti-slavery; Julia, the love of his life, was from a strongly pro-slavery family; Grant's family boycotted their wedding because of their views. I'm not sure Grant himself had much of an opinion when they married, but as time went on, he came to believe strongly that it was wrong to own people and to have them take orders and do work you should do. When his father-in-law gave him a slave, Grant gave the man his freedom.
When he left the military, he failed at a series of civilian jobs. The Southern attack on Ft. Sumter spurred his patriotism and he reentered military service.
This wikipedia article en.wikipedia.org/Ulysses_S._Grant includes detailed information about Grant's activities during the Civil War, but I suggest you first skip down to the section about his 2 terms as president, about which much less is commonly known. What I'd heard is that his administration was plagued by scandals and that he himself was plagued by alcoholism.
The "guide" at the birthplace told me 2 things about these points: (1) it's established fact that Grant was a good, honest man who trusted his friends farther than he should have; and (2) he drank when he was separated from his family, but it would be difficult for him to be an active alcoholic given he went from being appointed a military aide in 1861 to achieving the presidency 8 years later, while along the way defeating Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ensuring the end of the Civil War.
I think the guide might be right about both points. From what I've read, the scandals - which were real and severe - were not of Grant's own doing or participation; and though Grant drank at times, it looks like his reputation as a drunk came from political spin by his enemies.
After he retired, he and Julia traveled abroad for some years, returning to the US when their money started to run out. At about this time, Grant was diagnosed with throat cancer and started to write his memoirs, hoping they could be sold to provide an income for Julia after he died. He died just a few days after he finished writing them. His friend Mark Twain published the memoirs and, for many years, people believed Twain had written them, too. But Twain himself made it clear that his only role was as publisher and Grant did all the writing.
The memoirs sold well, and there was great public mourning after his death.
 |
| Pres. Grant Memorial Bridge |
 |
| Grant's Tomb in NYC |
The tomb, which houses sarcaphogi for both Pres. Grant and Julia Grant, is in Manhattan.
Back on the road
I continued along the Ohio River for a while, then turned north toward Stonelick State Park. This campground is much smaller than either of the last two. Most campsites at Ohio's state campgrounds don't offer water, but they're inexpensive, clean, and relatively well-separated from other sites. The shower rooms at most of them are about 30 years out of date, but they're clean and well-maintained. I'll stay at this one till I leave Ohio.
The following are the profiles of those involved in Ripley's Underground Railroad that I mentioned earlier:
No comments:
Post a Comment