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Solo Camping

By the time we got back to Cincinnati on Labor Day, Mike’s sciatica was out of control. We had made plans for him to stay at our nephew’s house, where he could stretch out in the spare room (or, mostly, on the living room couch). I couldn’t get down the narrow streets or turn around in his cul de sac with our trailer, however, so our daughter Alice took Mike over to her cousin’s house while I went on to the Ohio/Indiana state line, the location of Indian Springs Campground, where we had a reservation.

This was the first time I dropped and set up the Scamp by myself, and I did just fine. We had a new flexible hose for the water hookup; it works great. Fortunately I did hook up the water, because about a week into my solo stay there, they closed the bathrooms and showers at the campground for repairs, which is not cool.


Our campsite at Indian Springs RV Park, located
on the Indiana/Ohio border down off U.S. 50

However, it’s generally fine for an RV park. Nice people run it, and they have a laundry (which I used before they turned the water off), and a big take one book-leave one book library. I appreciate those at the campgrounds, motels, and laundromats we have frequented on this trip.

So, with me camped with the Scamp at Indian Springs and Mike up in town on the couch for the last two weeks, I have driven up to town to take him to doctor appointments, since he can’t drive right now (and also went to my own appointments), then driven back down to Indian Springs to sleep in our camper. It has mostly been peaceful, the sunsets have been lovely, and there was a beautiful full moon (the Corn Moon) on September 7. One morning the temperature change caused foggy conditions over the lake, which was lovely and a bit spooky.


The Indian Springs Campground lake was created
when they dug out fill for the nearby highway,
I-275, but it still looks lovely on a foggy morning

After I was there a few days, two people with a smallish trailer (thought not as small as ours) showed up a couple of sites up from where the Scamp is parked. They were fairly young (30s or 40s?), and for more than a week, they sat in two folding chairs looking at the campground lake all day, then as it began to get dark, they built a campfire and sat around it. They played bad music day and night, but fortunately the trailer(s) between them and me blocked the sound of the music. They had some esoteric decals on one of their cars that referenced the battle of the 300 Spartans against the Persians. (That was odd, too; they have two cars, which makes me think they don’t live too far away.)

Well, I started giving Mike reports on the Campground Spies—even though they didn’t really do much, I had my eye on them. One day suddenly they were gone all day, and when they came back in the evening they proceeded to hang laundry all over the struts of their awning, which they leave up all the time. (Mike would not allow that.) So, why did they go somewhere to do the laundry when there are perfectly good washing machines and dryers at Indian Springs? Two days later, they disappeared in the car with the strange decals, and they did not come back for a full day. We continued to make up wild stories about their spying mission, but they haven’t done anything more exciting than turn up with a big load of firewood, so I guess their mission continues.

There are also black ducks at the campground; they are interesting—all black, no multicolor feathers on their heads like some darker colored ducks. When I told Mike about them, we began to formulate the idea that they were actually robot ducks, sort of an aquatic version of drones, that were keeping an eye on the spies down the way. “I think his tailfeathers are really a  . . . camera?” (To misquote Paul Simon.)


Black Cayuga ducks (or are they cleverly
disguised drones?) at Indian Springs lake

Mike has had more doctor appointments; though there was some thought that a tick bite in Wyoming two months ago might have been the culprit to precipitate this particularly bad bout of sciatica, that was eliminated as a cause by an infectious disease specialist he saw—which is a good thing. This is not as crazy conspiracy theory–based as it may seem; our son had a really bad case of an unknown tick-borne disease about 15 years ago, so our concern was legitimate. But fortunately it proved to be unfounded.

So far the Oakley chiropractor, Dr. Pete, has made the biggest difference, and we are really hoping he’ll chase away the sciatica and we can get back on the road again soon. I enjoyed my short stretch of solo camping, but Mike is well enough to move back to the Scamp, and we moved it to Miami Whitewater Park in Harrison, where there is a LOT more shade than at Indian Springs RV Park. Our site is almost entirely shaded, which is nice with daytime temperatures into the 90s again. We have our half of the campground all to ourselves, though I understand the place will be full for the weekend. But there’s a lake, hiking trails, and a bike trail loop, so I have some entertainment. There’s also a nice coffee shop in downtown Harrison, where I am writing this blog entry. It’s called the Coffee Peddlar, and I’m pretty sure that’s a misspelling. The American spelling is Peddler, and the British spelling is Pedlar, so I’ll just say that their name is unique. The coffee’s fine, and so is the streusel.

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