June 26, 2014 - Granville, OH

This morning George got up early and took Abby out for a long walk around the campground before I got up. Abby loves puddles, which she splashes around in. The area had a lot of rain before we arrived with many areas of the county of Licking being flooded. Abby jumped on the bed and nuzzled me with her puddle drenched, toweled off face. George always towels her off, which she hates, but I think he missed her chin. After we had our coffee and chai, We stopped by the dumpster to get rid of the trash. Then we headed out to see the Alligator Mound, which is located in a development and surrounded by half a million to 1 million dollar homes. Some of the driveways, would scare me to drive down in summer conditions let alone in ice and snow. Funny thing is the ultra steep grades of the driveways impressed me more than the houses. The Alligator Mound is situated in the middle of a loop, and is quite steep to climb. To say the least, it was a bit disappointing. And frankly, I don't even know how it was first discovered? The most exciting part of it, besides the driveways was the Ohio Historical Marker at the foot of it. After I climbed to the top, I could see slightly raised areas with no discernable shape. After we left, I looked it up, and and saw an aerial view which showed a faint raised area that resembled an animal, if you have a vivid imagination. From there we headed to the Newark Earthworks, which is another prehistoric site made up of geometric shapes consisting of circles, an octagon and numerous smaller shapes of which the original formation was 4 miles in size. Unfortunately a good bit of the original formation was not preserved as it was built upon, and another part of it has a golf course on it. Archaeologists now  believe that the formation was a place of spiratural ritual rather than the early thinking that it was some sort of fort. They have noticed that the circle and octagon centers line up perfectly with the rising of the moon. After dissecting one of the mounds, it was discovered that the ancients used three colors of dirt. Carbon dating, of some of the items found in one of mounds, shows that they are approximately 2000 years old. And in it's enormity, can only be seen from above. The shapes are all mathematical in nature. Unlike the Alligator Mound, the shapes are quite detailed and sharp protruding from the landscape. We walked around a small portion of the grounds reading the plaques. Afterward, we went to an toured the Velvet ice cream company, to see how they make their ice cream. We ate lunch in their cafe. I had a delicious taco salad in a tortia shell bowl and George had a pulled pork barbecued sandwich. Afterward we had ice cream too. From there we went to an RV dealer to see if they had a replacement hose, like the one we loss on the first day out of this trip. They did not. When we came back to the campground we took Abby for a nice long walk, and went down to the creek to see if she would go in since it was a glorified puddle but she was put off by the current and only got her front paws wet. In campgrounds, one thing you can count on is having a crowd gather around gawking at you when you have difficulty parking your rig. There are the outright nosey ones, the helpful ones with valuable advice, the helpful ones that have no idea what they are talking about, laughing ones and the ones who are shaking their heads at you predictament. We spent most of the evening glued to the dinette window watching a a guy, trying to park a toy hauler trailer into a site with a tree with low branches. He must have pulled in and out two dozen times. Normally all rigs are backed in as the hookups are at the back of the site. This guy was pulling in so he could have his outside living area the same way as his friend in the next site. Both trailers had big motorcycles in the back. While he was still trying to get his rig in, another trailer arrived and he too, was having difficulty getting his rig just right. George couldn't help himself, and as he hooked Abby up for a short walk to get a better look. He may have been able to fool the others but he didn't fool me. Finally, I think he determined he had a better view from the motorhome. Eventually everyone was settled and tucked in for the night.