Though we are still not technically on the road for awhile, it’s spring in the Midwest and we are occasionally getting out to see some sites nearby. Last week we had a sunny, warm day that followed many days of rain, so we decided to head out somewhere to hike where there were boardwalks—or at least solid rock paths. We started at Charleston Falls, near Tipp City. The preserve was far more crowded than usual; the warm weather after a long winter apparently brought out the crowds, especially homeschooled kids and their families. We took the path less traveled back through prairie meadows (only slightly mushy) to the top of the falls, then wandered down the stone paths to the bottom of the falls. There was water going over the falls, though not a lot. The falls are fed by small underground springs several miles to the east, and the stream creating the falls plummets almost 40' as it flows to the Great Miami River, one mile to the west.  Charleston Falls Preserve in western O...

While we are on hiatus from the road, I went back and read over the blog entries I had written since September, and I realized that, like the Muppet Forgetful Jones, there were a few things I forgot to include in my blog entries. Or at least some things I could have mentioned about our adventures but didn’t, for whatever reason. So I thought I’d go back and add a few items of interest (I hope).  Like Forgetful Jones, I failed to remember or report on some semi-interesting events that occurred while we were on the road Starting at the very beginning, we had to vacate the newly sold house on Covedale Avenue before we were quite ready to leave town. We stayed overnight nearby at my sister and brother-in-law’s house that first night, thinking we could deal with everything we needed to at the storage place and then get on the road the next day. Wrong. So we stayed overnight at a hotel on the west side of town, which was surprisingly booked up for a Wednesday night in September. It tur...

We’re hanging around the Cincinnati area for awhile; it’s been a bit too cold to camp so the Scamp Shrimpi is in dry dock, sitting next to a ferris wheel at a friend’s sister’s carnival storage yard. It’s a nice place to rest its tires. Meanwhile, we are trying to get out and about when we can, and last week Mike and I went to Clifton Gorge, near Yellow Springs, Ohio, on a sunny but cool early spring day. After fortifying ourselves at the Clifton Mill restaurant, we headed down into the gorge for a hike, and right at the entrance to the trail there was a patch of grape hyacinth. They aren’t exactly wildflowers, someone must have planted them, but it was nice to see some color in the woods already. Grape hyacinth at the edge of Clifton Gorge There was a lot of water in the river, so the narrows were frothing, and we got a good view of them since there aren’t leaves on the trees yet. We hiked all the way (it’s not that far but I was happy to make it) to where Clifton Gorge connects t...