Day 9 - Five States In One Day

Miles driven: about 375

That last post should have said that we spent the night in Harrison, Ohio, not Harrisburg. Oops! Because we got in so late last night I decided to skip the free breakfast before we even went  to sleep. With no real good reason to adjust to EST, we haven't bothered to do so yet and aren't exactly getting up early in the morning. We only had one stop scheduled for today, so we weren't in a rush to get out of the hotel. I kinda wanted to have breakfast at the Waffle House, but we actually dragged our feet so much that I thought it better to grab a quick breakfast. Unfortunately there wasn't much around, so we ended up grabbing bags of donuts at the gas station. The kids probably thought it was the best breakfast ever!

Today's drive would have us traveling through five different states because the museum we were headed to was just inside Kentucky, and the road route was very strange. It had us traveling from Ohio back out to Indiana, down into Kentucky, back up through Ohio, and then across that strange little sliver of West Virgiana that sticks up between Ohio and Pennyslvania, before finally making our way into Pennsylvania itself.

Our scheduled stop of the day was the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. It was only about 30 minutes out of the way and I always thought it would be cool to go there. Years ago they were supposed to begin building a full-size ark on the grounds but they couldn't get enough funding together so construction was delayed. :(

We were surprised to find that nearly every car in the parking lot was from a different state, and we were the only ones representing the West Coast. I'm not sure if the place gets crowded or not, but we were glad to find it not too busy today. I was a little concerned at first because the beginning of the museum wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped, but the second half of the museum more than made up for it. They had tremendously life-like animatronic people that were placed in elaborate Biblical scenes. It was definitely cool to walk in the midst of it all.

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden

 

Noah directing the construction of the ark

 

Miniature model of the ark complete with animals

 

There were tons of dinosaurs in the museum, too, that roared and moved around - cool!

 

After we finished looking through the museum, we ate a Noah's cafe where Jessey had the Creation burger and I had an Eden Wrap (vegetarian, of course!). The girls had tasty chicken caesar salads. When we first walked in the museum, the girls were told that they had a petting zoo, so there was no way we were going to get out of there without seeing it. Walking out to the animal area, we traveled through a beautiful garden filled with tulips and daffodils. Gorgeous!!

 

 

The petting zoo was small but cute and included random animals like wallabys, camels, peacocks, a coatimundi, and a pair of what they called 'Zebroids'. One was a zorse (zebra-horse) and one was a zedonk (zebra-donkey). They were pretty cute.

 

 

A had already misplaced her souvenir from the gift shop that we bought before lunch so we had to make a little detour to the security office (which they call 'Public Safety') to retrieve it before we headed back out on the road for our next destination. We had once again scoped out a KOA - this time near SE Pittsburgh - as our stop for the night.

 

The whole Kentcuky/southwestern Ohio/eastern Indiana area was so beautiful. After so many days of rolling hills and rocky mountains it was stunning to suddenly see so much green everywhere. Even the center divide of the freeway was full of beautiful green grass. The sides of the road were thick with green leafy trees such that you couldn't even see what might be on the other side of them. It was a really beautiful area.

 

We hit our very first traffic of the entire trip in downtown Cincinnati. Amazingly we have not been stuck in even the slightest bit of traffic or slowdowns (except the occasional road work) in the last 9 days. The jam lasted for less than 10 minutes and then the landscape opened up to beautiful farmland that looked like it could be the cover of a puzzle box. I absolutely loved the scenery here!

 

 

Somewhere near Columbus we lost daylight, and shortly before we left Ohio we stopped for dinner. We couldn't decide between the Waffle House, Golden Corral, Steak 'n Shake, White Castle, Cracker Barrel, or Smoky Bones. This exit also had familiar staples like Olive Garden and McDonald's, but we were really in the mood to sample some local fare. I texted my sister to find out what my brother-in-law recommended since he grew up in Ohio and they both recommended White Castle as something we just had to try. We went inside and decided to go ahead and order one of just about everything on the menu and share it all amongst ourselves. The chicken rings were a big hit, as was the chicken ring sandwich and the cheese sticks. Pretty much everything on the menu is slider size, so that was fun.

 

As we ate at White Castle it became increasingly obvious that Jessey had his heart set on Golden Corral and was bummed that we didn't end up there. I was curious about it too since they have commercials for it at home but there isn't one for hundreds of miles from our home. I told him we'd drive across the street and see what it was like but that we probably wouldn't eat much there because we'd just eaten. We all love buffets so it was an easy sell. We grabbed a few odds and ends and sampled some of the unusual foods we don't have at our buffets back home, and then we tried some of their dessert. Jessey and I were not at all impressed with their desserts, but the girls were thrilled with the chocolate fountain and the cotton candy they had there.

 

 

 

Only the next morning did I think about what might have been stuck in that chocolate fountain during the day. Ewww..

 

I'm sure none of you would be surprised at this point to hear that we arrived at our campground late at night again. But we couldn't believe it when we had the same problem again that we had last night - we couldn't find the campground! We drove up and down the street looking for it, but it was nowhere. I was thinking how unlikely it was that two KOA's went belly-up in a row when it hit me - we were using Google maps. Duh! Why didn't I think of that sooner? I know better than to trust Google maps. We pulled out the KOA campbook and the directions in there said to go up one more exit and turn the opposite direction off the freeway. We did that and we found it! They still had one campsite available for use (they put an envelope in the night box), but it was actually a pull-through RV spot and was full of jaggedy rocks. No way was I putting the tent there! Their brochure said they had some tent spots onsite and we drove around in circles several times without seeing them. We settled on an RV spot that had a big patch of grass to the side of it and set our tent up there. We hoped they wouldn't mind where we were as long as we paid them, and I was too tired to care anymore. Our tent was setup, and we were staying (at least until they showed up in the morning and found us :P)