2016/08 Newf'land trip - Shades |
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Tuesday August 30th
This was the southernmost point of our trip. Ohio was also in our GPS’s Twilight Zone, and we were having trouble navigating the twiddly and confusing roads, just taking whichever road looked to be going north or west. On a narrow section we were passing an oncoming hay wagon when there was an explosion. We felt it as well as heard it so I pulled over thinking we had blown a tyre. We found no damage so we concluded that the wagon must have blown a tyre. We don’t know if the other driver had even noticed.
We got lost for a while in Chillicothe but found the two quilt shops there and moved on across Ohio towards Dayton. The land was now mostly flat, and freeways took us around the city. We were now blasting west along I-70, busy with truck traffic and boring, but a least we wouldn’t get lost.
We crossed into Indiana and easily found the two quilt shops in Richmond. By now I’d learned to pick shops that were only a few turns off the freeway. One of the shops had an address on National Road. Back in the 1830s it was just that, the first road built by the Federal Government, a distant ancestor of the freeway system.
Our last obstacle was the city of Indianapolis, difficult to avoid, but it has a ring road system like the Twin Cities’ and despite being in a rush hour thunderstorm, Sandie zoomed around in an hour of fast and furious traffic. We emerged to a peaceful 25 mile drive across flat corn fields to Shades state park.
Shades park was a complete contrast with its dense forest and steep ravines. The name is appropriate but apparently it had some darker connotations of murder and death in the past. Its difficult terrain kept the
farmers away, and it became a commercial campground and then a state park. I would imagine it’s full at weekends but on a damp Tuesday we had a whole section to ourselves and picked a site with plenty of light. The rain soon caught up with us so it was a good evening to cook up a multi-day 
curry.
Wednesday August 31st
The morning was foggy, warm, and damp, but the rain had almost stopped. The park’s map looked intriguing so we went to walk one of its trails. They were all dark under the trees. We found one that took us down a steep and greasy staircase into a ravine.
We came out onto a stream bed at the top of a waterfall. The stream was flowing but only just, so we wer
e able to splash and squish our way upstream beneath towering cliffs and between big ferns. The ravine was similar in feel to those in Australia’s Blue Mountains, but luckily not a thousand steps down and up!
This isolated environment had resulted in some strange animals and plants, none of which we’ve identified.. This spider looked to be carrying its own rock around for protection.
This looks to be a fungus but not something we’ve seen before; it almost looked like it could crawl. The yellow and blue flowers were new to us too,
State parks can be uninteresting, and often just protect a lake, but sometimes you find a gem and this was one of
them. On our way out we also found this covered bridge and what looked like a great canoeing river. Note the sign above the bridge “Cross this bridge at a walk.”