Odometer: 148608
Distance So Far: 3890
Days On the Road: 16
Final Stop: Parkersburg, WV

Today mom and dad went out of their way to see a site that seems more likely to be the result of Clifford, or giants that wanted to build a super-sick skateboard ramp, than mere mortals.

Giant mounds, man-made long before diggers came along and made it easier-but-not-much-faster. Why? Who knows. Maybe the pre-colonial way of hiding things you don’t want your siblings to find.

They’ve also strayed the farthest from water they’ve been in a week, in a move that’s sure to make mom cross. Hopefully, that won’t last. Mom hasn’t gotten her Yahtzee yet.

From Dad

Today was Mounds day.  We started at Mounds State Park in Anderson.  There were a couple of C-shaped structures that were fairly large, with depressions/trenches on the inside of the circle.  There were a couple other small structures.  The land had been settled by a German immigrant in the early 1800’s who recognized the mounds as significant and preserved them. [Editor’s note: what were they gonna do? Dig them by hand? …]

Then we drove to Newark, Ohio, east of Columbus.  The mound here, also C shaped, was impressive, in places ten to twelve feet tall, again with a trench around the inside about six feet deep.  It was close to a mile around the structure, all set in a beautiful city park with picnic tables and other facilities around the exterior.  This had once been part of a much larger complex that stretched away to the northeast, now occupied by civilization.  One question asked is why the trench is on the inside, when a moat would typically be on the outside.  I decided that it might by their water supply, if the inhabitants had to desert their homes and farms to take refuge there for a period of time.

From there we drove the back roads to Marietta, Ohio, which was supposed to have the most extensive complex.  Unfortunately, civilization has taken over.  There was one rectangular, flat topped mound in a city part, but that’s all it was.  A second had been turned in to a cemetery, which contained, according to a plaque on the fence, graves of “a mound builder chief, veterans of the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican, Civil, and Spanish American Wars, and many of the heroes of peace.”  A third mound had an Andrew Carnegie library built on top of it.  We went in there to inquire where we could see more mounds, and the lady told us about those three.  Kind of disappointing for a drive quite a bit out of our way.

But we took a few minutes and walked down by the Ohio River (which is a lake at Marietta), then crossed into West Virginia a few miles to our motel.