Hike Ohio Cards - SE Ohio and Mid-Ohio Valley West Virginia

For those of you who've picked up a "Hike Ohio" from the Buckeye Trail Association in the Parkersburg, Vienna, other areas of the Mid-Ohio Valley, West Virginia, as well as the City of Marietta and and other some other areas in Southeast Ohio, I probably put them there.

And I might imagine that you might be trying to determine what sections of the Buckeye Trail are nearby.  They are:

Belle Valley
Stockport
Road Fork
Whipple

In 2000, the Buckeye took over for the North Country Trail in the Marietta Unit of the Wayne National Forest. Currently, the Buckeye is a 1,445 mile circular trail within the four corners of Ohio.  North Country's 4,500mi route from Vermont to North Dakota still travels concurrent with Buckeye in the Marietta Unit of The Wayne.  You might drive by sometime and see that the "North Country Trail" signs have been changed to "North Country/ Buckeye." I just think of it as two highway routes on one road.  And the Buckeye Trail as the "roundabout" of the hiking world.  Depending on who you talk to, it's still the largest loop trail in the world.

Log 2015052304

It's been a little while since I logged last.  I live in the Western Hills neighborhood in Marietta of Washington County.  I rent a room in a house on a high hill that has a stellar view of Marietta's north side.  You might call this place "Upper Harmar." You might think that it's just a $20 folding camp chair.  But when I'm on the back porch, it feels more like a throne.  Other than that, there's a bunch of things that I'm trying to do to the place.  Right now, I'm making progress on a mouse problem.

I have a bathtub drain where the water will not go down.  Right now, I'm thinking about getting the Roto Router in here.

The garage is one car and has a lawn tractor in it.  It doesn't have any exterior door controls and the garage door opener doesn't work.  So, my car is parked outside with it's manual transmission in gear, the parking brake on full and chalks deployed because of the driveway's grade.  If the car were ever to roll, it will punch though an attached garage at the neighbors house across the street.

I've known for a while that the parking brake's 3 cable system in my 2008 Chevy HHR LS are stretched.  When I back up while applying the break, I can hear sounds from my rear left brake shoes.  The parking brake cable is attached to a rocker bar.  And that's attached to a brake shoe (it doesn't have it's own hardware).

I'm waiting until the 1st of the month to get my Electronic Control Module looked at.  The technician at Sears this past month was able to crimp the broken wires that led to the Cylinder 1 spark plug mount.  They were cut by a bar that once mounted the air filter manifold to the engine block.  Once upon a time, the bar above the mounting hole snapped, leaving a rough, but sharp and perpendicular edge.  They were cut by the bouncing of the air filter manifold as I was driving.

I then had an engine misfire somewhere just before Marietta.  I stopped at Speedway to get some gas and selected the 87 octane. It didn't have a light on at the bottom the selector, but it worked and I gave it a full tank.  Well, when I pulled out of there, the misfire started happening and I was experiencing reduced power.  And I thought, "oh my gosh, Speedway gave me bad gas!!!"

But that wasn't true.

This month has not been good with the weather forecasts.  I've had 2 straight of the last 3 weeks of lightning forecasted for the Marietta area.  It didn't happen as much as they forecasted, but that's hind sight.  Nothing scares me more than being caught in a lightning storm on the trail.  There's nowhere to take shelter out there.  And there hasn't been a chance to blaze at all this month.  I'm really hoping the weather is going to break soon.

One last thing... I have no idea what direction the wind usually comes from.  In NE Ohio, I remember a naturalist saying that they never built bird houses where bird would have to fly west into the hole because that's where the wind usually comes from.  Up north, our weather typically came from Chicago.

Log 2015050401

The weather band radio station for the The Wilderness Loop of the Buckeye Trail (Road Fork, Whipple and parts of the Belle Valley and Stockport Sections, North Country Trail partially concurrent) is WNG734 on 164.4 MHz (Ch. 1) from Marietta of Washington County and KZZ46 transmitting at 162.425 MHZ (Ch. 2) from Athens.

Log 2015042201

I arrived in the Marietta area about 20 hours ago.  And I've been staying at a hotel on the West Virginia side since.

- More items were dropped off at the supply point

- Before I left, I forgot to charge my power tool batteries, but I got them done at the hotel.

- I set up a PO box in the unincorporated community of Whipple in Washington County.

- I attempted to track the trail from Leith Run Recreation Area to the Whipple Section - Buckeye/ North Country Trail.  But I didn't have a map, so I was working on just my memory.  And when it got longer than it should, I exited the forest on to Archers Fork Rd/ C14 and took the pavement back to my car.

- I got hiking maps from the National Forest Service Ranger Station in the unincorporated community of Reno in Washington County and found that I was tracking the wrong trail yesterday.

- I did some grocery shopping and I have enough supply to last at least 8 days.

- While I was at the hotel, I a small amount of laundry.

- I realized that my geotagged photos on Google Earth from my desktop computer didn't transfer over to the laptop.  This is because the geotags were dependent on the location of the photo files on the desktop.  The solution to the problem is to place geotagged photos on my Dropbox account, then create an identical file structure on my laptop and reassign Dropbox's local synchronizing folder to it.

- My toiletry bag has a few items that it did have before and is over filled.

Log 2013102401

I checked out of Basecamp Alpha again and have now established Basecamp India at the Ring Mill Campground in the Wayne National Forest - Marietta Unit. Prior to this, I picked up my mountain bike at Threesixty Bike Shop in Zanesville of Muskingum County. I test drove it before leaving and everything seems to be in working order.

I'm writing this from a McDonald's in New Martinsburg, West Virginia, which is the closest to Basecamp India.  I stopped over at the Noble County Sheriff's Department to ask about where the Craig's List Killings took place.  And I was informed that it happened on Don Warner Road, which intersects the BT.  As to where exactly, the SD wouldn't elaborate.