RVing with Jim and Chris 2013: Cambridge, Ohio to Tremont, PA

One of many farms we passed today.

Thursday. Today we got on the road by 8:30 am from Spring Valley Campground in Cambridge, OH after debugging the windshield. Wonder how long it will be before the first bug has the guts to fly into it (ok, that sounded awful but it was the thought as we pulled out and at the moment we both got a laugh out of it!)

Today we continue on I-70 in eastern Ohio past Old Washington where in July 1863, Old Washington was the site of a small engagement during the course of Morgan’s Raid. In the course of their campaign through Ohio, these Confederate raiders appeared in several Guernsey County villages, including Old Washington, where they wreaked havoc before being caught by Union cavalry. We also passed Quaker City (historical earthquake activity here is much lower than the remainder of Ohio) and St. Clairsville (nicknamed “Paradise on the Hill”) before reaching the Ohio River and Wheeling, WV.

Blooms are everywhere

We passed a “Dickenson Cattle” billboard with a dozen live cows lying in the grass around the base of the billboard which would have made a great advertisement photo if traveling 65 mph had not prevented me from capturing it. This is a family owned business that specializes in the breeding of the highest quality, registered Texas Longhorn Cattle since 1967.

The countryside is getting green but leaves are just starting.

Located also in this area is the Egypt Valley Wildlife Refuge where hunting is now popular. Previously this area was surface mined using some of the largest earth moving machines. Historically, there was an infamous murder here in 1869 of a thirteen year old girl named Louiza Fox by her 22 year old fiancee Thomas Carr. Carr slit Louiza’s throat and stabbed her fourteen times after her parents learned of his violent past and retracted their former approval of the union. At his sentencing he admitted to killing another thirteen people (a serial killer it seems.) Louiza was buried in Salem cemetery, where there have been folklore reports of visions of the ghost of the girl weeping at her grave. She and Carr both are said roam the land of Egypt Valley and also have been seen at the site of Louiza’s murder. Carr was the first person hanged in Belmont County.

In this area we passed several Christmas tree farms with all different sizes of trees. We took Interstate 470 over the Ohio River into Wheeling, WV, where we saw a huge skate park and passed the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum by 9:30 am. We also saw another Russell Stover Chocolate and Ice Cream Store and I thought, “Is it too early to stop for ice cream at 9:30 am?”
I noticed four story homes here on hillsides with basements partially exposed which means there are four flights of stairs from basement to attic but not what I would want to keep up at this point in my life. In Taylorsville, PA there was a billboard on the side of the road that read “The Obama Administration No Job Zone.” Near Washington, PA we saw “Beau Street” (my brother’s nickname) that brought a smile and it was at this point that a gray squirrel ran out into the middle of our lane of the Interstate and somehow survived to run back to the edge of the road between our front and rear RV tires! That’s one fast squirrel.

We crossed over the Monongahela River near Belle Vernon, PA. Near here we saw a billboard for www.nogreenslime.com which turns out to be a rebuttal to the environmentalists over natural gas development by the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association. Shortly thereafter we saw a beautiful barn near Somerset, PA. Sadly we also passed the sign noting the exit to the Flight 93 National Memorial. I have mixed feelings about visiting this memorial and putting the physical sight of it into my memory.

We traveled through the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Here we saw a barn with “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco” painted on the side of it and a “Modern Mushroom Farms” truck passed us-the old and the new you’d think. But Modern Mushroom Farms is a third generation, 85 year old mushroom farm business. A Mail Pouch Tobacco Barn, or simply Mail Pouch Barn, is a barn with one or more sides painted from 1890 to 1992 with a barn advertisement for the West Virginia Mail Pouch chewing tobacco company, based in Wheeling, West Virginia. At the height of the program in the early 1960s, there were about 20,000 Mail Pouch barns spread across 22 states! Here also we saw fields of yellow dandelions already in bloom. Another question we asked at this point “How many men does it take to pump out below a manhole cover?” Answer: Five watching and one pumping. Source: Pennsylvania Road Crew.

A gas attendant in Pennsylvania noted on the winter weather in Minneapolis the night before west of us and said, “It hasn’t been a bad winter, it just won’t go away.” Luckily we are well east of it at the moment. Near Carlisle, PA we noted a sign for the “Army War College & Heritage Center” and a “National Cemetery and Veteran’s Memorial” then we crossed the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, PA. Finally before stopping for the night, we traversed Hersey, PA known as the “Sweetest Place on Earth” and “Chocolatetown, USA” where the Hersey Chocolate Factory founded in 1909 by Milton Hersey and the Hersey Medical Center are situated.