Ohio Family & Friends

Ohio has been even busier than West Virginia. It started with a stop at Kraus Pizza (our favorite). John finally got into a Ford repair shop. It took all day, but the air conditioner is working again. We also had a meeting with our financial advisor while we were in the area.

We were able to spend several days visiting with John’s son Johnny, daughter-in-law Jenny, and granddaughter Ava. Johnny is a chef so we had some great food. Ava is very active and kept us quite entertained!

We also enjoyed a hike in the woods and skipping stones in the water.

We enjoyed Friday evening sitting and talking with my brother’s family while listening to music in the Medina Square.

Plus, we had lunch with college friends Nancy and Kurt!

Oh…and a stop at Smuckers in Orrville Ohio.

WV Family

Sue and Frank visited us at Coopers Rock State Forest. The forest is named after Coopers Rock which is a LARGE rock (we're standing on it) with a great view.

Coopers Rock WV

I’ve changed my mind about the cicadas being worse 17 years ago. We’re now in the part of the cycle where cicadas are flying everywhere and don’t seem to be able to fly around people. If you are walking where they want to be, they smack into you. They smash into windshields too, making large smears. They are starting to die now. The laundry room was filled with ~100 cicada bodies on the floor. Luckily I found someone from the camp to sweep them up. Very yucky and creepy!

Heard a good story from a couple of motorcyclists. They were driving along and starting hearing some noise. It first sounded like a problem with a car they were passing. Then they realized it was all the time. They drove to a repair shop to fix the problem with their bikes. As they turned off the bikes, they realized the sound was everywhere.  It was the cicadas!

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks. Life continues even when you are RV’ing. We got my computer fixed, went to the dentist, and to the eye doctor. We have some follow-up appointments, so we plan to visit Ohio then come back.

We’ve also had some major problems with the RV. The truck air conditioner failed. John visited or called 5 different Ford dealers. None of them had the space to fix an RV. He had to call the Ford service department who found a dealer in the Akron area. We’re hoping to get that fixed next week. There are multiple problems with the RV (again). The stove not working is probably the biggest. The problem is that when we call a Camping World, they don’t have time to look at it for weeks. Still trying…

After all the problems, we’ve enjoyed some wonderful hikes in the park. This park is full of rocking areas to climb along with forest paths. It’s nice to relax!

Cicadas

Some cicadas come out annually but some emerge only every 17 years. Coopers Rock in West Virginia is in the midst of the Brood V emergence. What this means is you hear cicadas in the background all the time and it’s loud! The weird part is that you don’t hear them close up, just in the distance.

Live bugs are everywhere. Cicada shells are everywhere. Dead bodies are everywhere. Live bugs occasionally fly up and hit you. We’ve found four live cicadas in the RV. It’s not that they are dangerous (no biting), but they are disgusting and creepy!

The life cycle is that the new nymphs crawl out of holes in the ground (again…holes are everywhere).

They crawl up a tree (or picnic table, chairs, bikes, etc) and molt their shell to become an adult. After this the males make that noise to attract a female to mate. The female lays eggs in a groove in a tree (which can damage young trees). Within 2-4 weeks, the adults all die. The eggs hatch and then the cicada feeds on tree fluids. It eventually drops down where it crawls around underground to feed on tree roots. Seventeen years later it all happens again.

I remember that last one in 1999. It was much worse. I couldn’t walk outside without being hit by a cicada. The dead bodies filled the cooling tower at work. We had to have maintenance people cleaning water filters every hour as the dead bodies plugged the filters. What a great picture to imagine!

Charles Town West Virginia

As a full-timer, I don’t really notice the date that much. We worry a bit about weekends because the locals come out and campsites are more difficult to find. But I totally didn’t remember that Memorial Day was coming. By the Monday before, I started to look for a campsite and everything was full in several states. We tried for a walk-in site (no reservations), but they filled up too. We ended up staying one night in a Walmart and two at a casino.

There is a Charleston and a Charles Town in West Virginia. Charles Town is named after Charles Washington who founded this town and is also the younger brother of George Washington. It’s an interesting town with a mixture of history and a big casino. The cemetery is full of Washingtons.

Plus I loved this stone.

This courthouse is the site of the John Brown trial. In case you don’t remember the history of this (me too), abolitionist John Brown along with other raiders tried to seize a federal armory to start a fight against slavery in 1859. Many of the raiders were killed during the raid while he and several raiders were hung after a trial. Some Northerners considered John Brown a martyr. Only a few years later the Civil War was fought.

This is the site of the actual hanging. A house was built soon after the hanging. It’s a gorgeous house, but it would be so weird to know hangings occurred in your backyard plus having tourists staring at your house all the time.

Nearby is Harpers Ferry National Park. This is where the armory was located. The park is full of museums on several topics plus has the Appalachian Trail running through it.

Linville Falls North Carolina

We’ve been to Linville Falls before but this time the mountain-laurel are blooming.

Some hikes are nice. Here’s the view on the easy trail.

Some hikes are tough. One of them had several places where you can tell by the dark bark that hundreds of people have grabbed the tree to help them up and down the trail.

  

At the bottom of the trail is a wonderful falls. Of course, you then have to climb up the trail to get back.

Geocaching

We’d never heard about Dreher Island State Park in South Carolina before, but really loved it. Most of the campsites are on the water and the biking is nice.

At both Dreher Island and Colleton we did a lot of geocaching within the park. It’s always interesting to see the containers and the method of hiding the caches. Just to show you some examples, here’s a Tupperware container inside a tree, an ammo box beside a stump, and a plastic jug buried in an underground hole. Some geocaches we find quickly and some take us several visits. Well, and some we never find. It’s always interesting and gets us hiking, biking, and driving in areas we wouldn’t necessarily visit.

Dell Support ??

The hard drive on my 2.5 month old Dell computer failed. That’s bad enough. Then the replacement hard drive from Dell had a corrupt Windows 10 system. Even though the computer was less than 3 months old, I had to pay for extended warranty or they wouldn’t fix it for over 2 weeks. I also had to find and pay for another company to do the data retrieval on the old drive since that isn’t covered.

After 10 days, ~5 hours on the phone, hours and hours downloading files, repeating my service tag/name/email address/phone number to multiple people as I was transferred back and forth between the same departments, some screaming, and tears; my computer is now working. I do not plan to ever buy another Dell. I now fully understand the thousands of people who give Dell Support the lowest service rating.

Deep breath….OK, I am better. Now to catch up on the blog, email, work, etc.