We're in Ohio!

It usually takes us about a month to wander through one state into another. So we are obviously in full-speed gear to be crossing another state line after only spending 3 nights in West Virginia. We approached the big blue bridge that took us over the wide Ohio River into the state bearing the same name.

It was another smooth moving day, and Mark is a happy camper behind the wheel of the motor home.

We got settled into our camping spot at Lancaster Campground in Lancaster, Ohio. A little public campground with only 24 sites, we have good electricity and water, but no sewer hookups. This is the first park we've ever experienced that has free pump-out service twice a week, so it's almost as good as a full-hook-up site. We always like to explore our newest home town, and so we drove a loop around Lancaster. With 40,000 residents, they have a mall and all the big name box stores. But more importantly, they have a bakery just down the street, that offers half-price on everything after 6 p.m. The first evening we bought a cinnamon roll and a bavarian creme long john. At first glance, you would assume they are both fitting on a saucer. But that is actually one of the biggest cinnamon rolls we have ever eaten, almost covering a full-size dinner plate. Not a bad deal for $1.75 total for the two pastries. We made an unhealthy number of trips to that bakery before we left town.

In the center of town we found Rising Park, and saw that many of Lancaster's citizens were out exercising on a beautiful evening. This is obviously a very old city park, as trees don't grow this big overnight. You can barely see Denisa, standing under one of the park's trees.

There are walking trails and ponds and playgrounds, and we were surprised at the number of people outside on a weekday evening. We took the up-hill hike through the woods, filled with tall trees and vines that would make Tarzan proud.

Our hike's destination is to the top of Mt. Pleasant. A 300-foot rock in the middle of town, it has a sheer drop-off from the view point at the top. That's probably why there are guard rails for people to stay behind. Mark just assumes that those were placed there for other people.

The view from the top helped get us oriented to our new surroundings, as we could see most of the city of Lancaster from the top.

We drove to the county fair grounds to get a view of Mt. Pleasant from the bottom. Just minutes before we had been standing on that rocky outcrop at the top. There is a horse race track at the fair grounds, and we found more people getting exercise walking the track this evening.

We were actually at the fair grounds hunting for a covered bridge that was on a tourist map. There are 18 original covered bridges in Fairfield County, more than anywhere else in Ohio. Of course, we plan to go searching for some of them. We found this one not far from the high school.

Not far from the bridge was a wide grassy area, where a doe and her two fawns were resting.  We like everything we've seen (and tasted) in our new little town of Lancaster, Ohio. We think we'll stay for a while!