Today was a travel day and we left Jefferson, Ohio’s Kenisee Lakes TT and headed south towards Kimbolton, OH. We started south on SR-11 until we reached the area south of Colombiana where we thought we could take a shortcut on a road shown as Ohio 45. On the map, it appears to run fairly straight. In the Good Sam road atlas, it shows it as being RV-friendly. Once we got onto 45, we found it was neither RV-friendly nor straight instead becoming a narrow, serpentine track with ample opportunities for hard uphill pulls and terrifying downhill sections requiring substantial braking in order to maintain control.
After what is shown as about 10 miles but what seems like 50, we emerged onto Ohio 7 which runs south on the western shore of the Ohio River. The Ohio River in this section is an industrial waterway with locks and calm waters running adjacent to large power plants and abandoned former smokestack industries. It is not very attractive. On the side of the road away from the river, there is emerald green hardwood forests that are very nice. Just don’t look toward the river. We continued on 7 to Steubenville where we turned west on Ohio 22. 22 starts out as a very scenic limited access highway with two lanes each way divided by a green median about 50 feet wide. Regrettably, after passing west of Hopedale, the road turns into a sinuous track with no divider and narrow lanes with lots of challenging corners and steep inclines. There is nowhere to pull out to let the pissed-off drivers that inevitably collect behind our 50-foot long vehicle and home pass our babies. Passing lanes are non-existent. Losing two wheels over the edge of the pavement would be fatal.
We continued on sub-highway 22 until we got to a town called Winterset where the Garmin directed us to turn north on a steep, narrow rural road without shoulders. Later, we realized this section was the good part because after a town shown in tiny font as Birmingham, the road went to single lane gravel and mud with deep ditches along both sides. This grubby road got narrower and darker the further we went but it was way too skinny to even contemplate turning around and chickening out. After some 30 minutes of terror, we emerged onto a road with really crummy paving but it was much better than the mud. A few miles later, we arrived at Rocky Fork Ranch Resort near Kimbolton.
Our first glimpse of the place was of enormous wide spots on both sides of the road where the resort has installed a fake ghost town, some riding stables, a driving range, a paint ball complex, an archery range, a shooting range, a store, a pizza shop, tennis courts, something called a “Captain’s Club” and, if you look carefully, the office where you check-in and register for your RV space. We were assigned C-8 and were told to hop back in our rig to await the arrival of the escort who would show us to our campsite. He must have been real busy because it took a while for him to show. He finally arrived and had us follow him up a very hard pull to our site where we pulled in, set up and turned on the AC before disappearing inside our trailer to cry over today’s driving woes. Although the roads on the drive were very challenging, the scenery was quite pretty, as long as you didn’t look at the west bank of the Ohio River. Even on the horrible road and sub-road sections, it was very green and shady which is fortunate because it is about 90 degrees outside and the humidity is perched at around 90%. Thanks to our wonderful trailer manufacturer for his excellent installation of both of our air conditioning units.