Well, this week was interesting. We had planned to spend a day at the Ark Encounter as well as a day or two at the Creation Museum all while moochdocking at another friend’s house. But sometimes, things just don’t go as planned.
If you remember from my last post, we were moochdocking overnight at Liberty Bible Church in Crittenden, KY so that we could go to church with our friends on Sunday morning. This actually was going to be our first time meeting them in person.
I knew the wife because she was in one of the virtual homeopathy study groups I lead. She had emailed me after a study group and mentioned that her husband works at the Ark Encounter and said they’d love to host us. So this was our chance to meet them and take them up on their offer.
After church, they took us to pick up our tickets at the Ark Encounter, gave us a bit of a “backstage tour”, and fed us lunch before letting us go on our own through the entire ark. We spent around 5 hours walking the 4 floors of the ark.
If you’ve never been, we highly recommend it! The pictures you’re about to see don’t do it justice.
I’d love to go back through this again over multiple days and just spend a couple of hours on each level of the ark really taking it all in, reading all the signs, and looking at all the detail. One of the most fascinating things we took away from visiting the ark is how they could have housed, fed, watered, and taken care of the waste of all the animals. Mind blowing!!
It was quite funny that as we made it back down to the lowest floor where the gift shop was located, it was raining heavily outside. Guess we were on the ark at just the right time!
After our visit to the Ark Encounter, we needed to head back to the church to grab the camper and get to our next moochdocking location. But first….ICE CREAM!
We found a cute little ice cream shop not far from the church where our RV was parked. So we stopped in and spent probably 20 minutes deciding on what we wanted. SO MANY CHOICES!!! If you’re ever in the area, make a stop at Whippy-Dip.
Last week, I was browsing an RV Facebook group and saw one of my Facebook friends (who I’ve “known” for years through a Disney planning group we were both a part of helping get started) comment that her family would love to let RV families stay on their property when they come through to visit the Ark Encounter. They live only about 10 minutes away. What perfect timing! We had no idea where we were going to stay this week, so I messaged her and she said we could stay with them for the week.
So after we grabbed the RV, we headed to their property. There was a large tree with some low hanging branches over their driveway that they ended up having to cut off so we could get into the yard. We made it in, but the yard was fairly steep. We spent about an hour trying to get level, but due to all the rain they had had the previous week, the ground was just too soft. Our blocks just continued to sink into the ground. We just couldn’t get level.
So they said we could move to the yard on the other side of the driveway since it was much flatter. We thought it would be easy, but alas, it still wasn’t meant to be. The blocks sank into the ground (again), we couldn’t get level from side to side this time, and Brent was getting frustrated.
They will be building a new home on a larger property just about 5 minutes away, and they even offered for us to stay over there. I went and checked it out in the jeep just to make sure we’d fit. While that property was perfect (level with gravel), in my opinion the trees lining the roads to get there were possibly too low hanging for us to feel comfortable navigating in the dark. By this time it was 10pm and I didn’t want to chance that Brent would be driving to the new location and take off the top of our RV with a tree in the process. So we opted NOT to try to get to that property.
Fortunately, our friends that took us to the Ark Encounter lived in a residential neighborhood where the street behind their house was completely empty. They said we could come park behind their house on that empty street for the night until we could find another place where we could go. So off we went, 45 minutes away to park on the street for the night.
The next day, we had planned to let Brent work for the day and then move somewhere new in the evening once we found a campground or RV park to stay at. But mid-morning I received a text from my friend saying that the neighbor called the sheriff and they wanted us to move the RV. Ugh!
So at noon, we moved.
Where we stayed: Indian Springs Campground
City: North Bend, OH
This was a lovely campground. The majority of the campsites back up to a lake. It had full-hookups with nice shade trees. The staff was nice. They had a laundry room with one washer and one dryer (you’re not allowed to leave your laundry unattended). And there was a playground and paddleboats.
We didn’t end up spending much time outside because the three kids were all fighting off a head cold the first few days this week and then ended up passing it to me by mid-week. It was horrible for me and I was down for the count. Brent kept saying I didn’t have a fever, but my body sure felt achy all over like I did. My head felt like it was shrinking while my brain felt like it was blowing up like a balloon. I had a horrendous headache at the back of my head. And my nose would run, then get stuffy, then run, then get stuffy again. My throat was on fire and I had a horrible earache.
None of my natural remedies or homeopathic remedies were working. They did for the kids, but they didn’t for me. While I didn’t feel like I had covid (no loss of taste or smell, no trouble breathing), I ended up using the homeopathic remedies that have been successful for others who used them for covid. By bedtime Thursday, I was feeling 75% better. Thank goodness!!!
Brent seemed to be coming down with it by Friday, but we were able to keep his at bay pretty well. He definitely did not end up as bad as me.
Surely all the “excitement” was finally done for the week. WRONG!!!
The news had been saying all day that we were in for severe weather Friday evening. We were watching TV for the evening and the local news station would break in during the commercials to provide updates on watches and warnings. We were under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning and a Tornado Watch.
The Tornado Watch made me quite uneasy. I mean, we live in an RV which aren’t the safest things to be in during a tornado. I ended up putting a bugout bag together really quick in the event that we got placed under a Tornado Warning and had to leave. I also made sure the kids had on clothes because many days they just stay in their pajamas all day.
Not 15 minutes after I packed up, the tornado warnings came over the TV and the sirens started going off. So we booked it out of the RV to the Jeep. I know cars aren’t the safest place to be either, but Brent said “at least in the Jeep, we have roll bars all around us to protect us.” The campground office was a trailer, so that wasn’t a safe place either. Not to mention, they close at 5pm anyway.
As the rain was pouring down and I was starting to freak out, I completely forgot that the Jeep’s spare tire is on the back. So when I was running around the Jeep to get to the passenger side, I ran right smack into the spare tire. I hit it full force and fell to the ground. I busted up my leg on the asphalt and either ended up with a tibia fracture right under my knee, falling on it so hard that it pushed my tibia backwards, or bruising the bone pretty deeply. I really don’t know which. It’s still very painful, it’s unstable, and I can’t kneel on it. Any little movement or touch has me writhing in pain. I guess if it’s still this bad next week, I’ll find a colleague to shoot an x-ray of it.
But back to the tornado. We all finally made it into the Jeep and headed out of the campground to try to go north….away from the warning area. Brent was dodging trees that had fallen into the road. And at one point, a truck was going the opposite direction and flashing their lights at everyone heading the way we were going. So I assumed (wrongly) that the tornado was going that direction and I was freaking out even more.
Brent ended up turning around and taking us back the other direction. That was freaking me out too. He couldn’t win, and my kids were freaking out because I was freaking out.
We did end up pulling under an overpass (I know, not the greatest thing to do either) and then the rain and wind started easing up. At that point we headed back to the RV.
We turned the TV on and watched the news a little longer before heading to bed. They were talking about a restaurant that had it’s roof ripped off and we found out that restaurant was 1.2 miles away from the campground. We don’t know if it DID end up being a tornado or just high winds.
We had to leave the campground on Saturday by noon. We were going to pack up and go over to the Creation Museum for the day before heading to Columbus for the night, but the lightning and high winds caused power outages around the area and the Creation Museum closed for the day.
So we changed our plans and headed straight to our next moochdocking spot at a friend’s farm in Washington, PA.
We are so excited to spend some time here. It’s beautiful!
The family that lives here was also a full-time RV family for a while. They were our neighbors at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta in 2017. Their girls basically attached themselves to my girls. And they have a son who is the same age as our son. Mom is a naturopath, so of course we have tons in common. We met up with them quite a few times in 2017 and 2018. Then they settled down here.
We also go another sweet surprise. Another RV family we met at the 2017 balloon fiesta was traveling through this area to go to a wedding and stopped in to spend the night. So we’ve been able to see all sorts of friends!
We’re looking forward to spending some time here over the next couple of weeks.
Really enjoyed this post, Kristi! What a crazy adventure you had – so sorry to hear about your knee injury. Hope homeopathy and time and the good Lord are bringing about healing. I knew you were going to be close to our house while we were on our camping trip out west, but I didn’t know you would be THIS close! The campground you stayed at is right at the bottom of the hill where we live! I actually thought that this campground was just a little out of the way spot for fishermen. I didn’t realize it was so nice – and it’s only 10 minutes away! If I’d have known, you could have come to our house and stayed in our driveway, and used our electric and such. Oh well, sounds like it worked out well. I always enjoy reading about your RV’ing adventures!