June 25, 2005 - Wilmington, OH

We've been doing some of the "no cameras allowed" kinds of stuff lately.  Makes for easier web editing, that's for sure.

The outdoor theater was a hoot.  No cameras allowed, of course.  I counted 14 different horses, but there may have been more.  It was the story of Blue Jacket, a white man who became a Shawnee Chief.  In the story, he was captured as a young boy of 10 when he and his brother were off by themselves.  He gave himself up so his younger brother could escape, and then he took up the Shawnee lifestyle.  He was wearing his blue jacket when captured, thence the name.  The story was of the conflicts between the settlers and the natives, including some French and Americans too, of course.  Turns out there was a good bit of fact in the story, too.  I did some research on it, and there was some dispute as to Blue Jacket's true age and heritage, but sure enough, he was a real person who did great things with the Shawnee.  And the Caesar's Creek this and that (flea market, state park, etc.) `around here truly is because of the escaped slave named Caesar who'd come north only to be captured by the Shawnee as well, and then he too took up their lifestyle.  And he and Blue Jacket did things together.  In the end, Caesar was given lots of land around here, and it still carries his name.  Lots of neat history around here in the Little Miami Valley.

And meanwhile, back at the ranch......... What's this?  For sure a cardinal on the left, but who's that on the right?  Too much color to be a female cardinal, not enough to be a male, and before we could really figure it out, it did just what they always do.  It took off.

As we waited, the cardinal came back and was tolerating some sparrows in the seed feeder, and then this new guy shows up again.  This time he's watching the seed feeder from atop the hummingbird food holder.

And boy, can he crack those seeds!  I couldn't find a thing in the books about him, but Barb found he was a pyrrhuloxia.  And she can even pronounce it.  I think.  Sure could fool me.

"Mound builders" is what some called the people, here at North America's largest, prehistoric Indian hilltop earthworks.  But in fact it now appears that they were just the people who lived here who happened to build mounds.  Lots of them.  Some simple, like this burial mound Barb is standing by and others that were quite sophisticated and set up to match the solar calendar; others that represented animals and many that we have no idea about.  The location of Fort Ancient is about 8 miles from where we are, and even though it was predicted to be a warm day, we took off anyway.  We don't sit around for too long too much of the time, and we both felt the urge to get out and do something, regardless of the heat and humidity.  This is a place to explore 15,000 years of American Indian heritage in the Ohio Valley.  It's a national Historic Landmark, of course.

Many of the mounds like this small one have been dug up and then restored since the early 1930's.  Many (most, actually) have been destroyed to level the ground for building and for crops.  There were several trails leading to different parts of the park, and this one was taking us to some stone circles.  The Boy Scouts have done lots of the trail work, building little bridges like this one and clearing brush.

Rather non-descript and, if it hadn't been for the brush outlining the circle, we'd have missed it completely.  Apparently there were three of these, although we only found two.

Some research gave the scientists some pretty clear ideas of the diet of the native people and artifacts then were used to replicate this day shelter and canoe made by the Scouts.

The "house" was amazingly cool, despite the loose fitting roof.  The walls of mud were about 12" thick on average, with light limbs to help stabilize the mud.

Not sure if those were sleeping platforms, or just used for shelving to keep things off the floor.  In one corner was what appeared to be a fire pit.

Then off on another trail.  From the looks of things, the sign asking people to stay off the mounds was well respected.  We saw no obvious damage.  The roadway cut through one of these mounds, and you can see it by the height from the surrounding land.  Amazing to think about the motivation for these people to work that hard with the bone and stone tools they had and the baskets they would have used to haul the dirt.  Apparently this mound building went on for over several hundred years.  There are theories that the mounds had spiritual significance, and it must have been that.  Why else would a people work so hard for so long for something that brought no apparent physical return.  Even though it's called Fort Ancient, it wasn't really a fortification at all.

And yeah, there are flowers here, and some other strange growths among the leaf litter.

The trails were not overused by any means, but were still easy to follow.  Nice and shady, but the humidity was still there.  Apparently the Army Corps of Engineers planted this ground cover many years ago in an attempt to slow down the erosion of some of the drainage ditches the natives had built around these mounds.  Amazing feat of both design and construction, when you look at it carefully.  Sure would be nice to really know what it was all about.  When the Europeans first came across people living amongst the mounds and asked about them, the locals claimed little knowledge about what it was all about.

We considered hiking down - way down - to the Little Miami River, but we could hear all kinds of racket from what sounded like a bunch of kids in canoes messing around down there.  And besides, it was hot and muggy, so we continued along the terrace trail.  These bright green bugs were always just out of range until I caught these two either fighting or loving.  I couldn't tell, but there sure were a bright green.

This was weird.  The flower was actually in the crotch of the leaves on this plant.  And besides looking a bit scruffy, it was dang hard to take a picture, what with all the bugs buzzing around our heads.

Down in this gulch is suppose to be an old culvert from way back, made of stone.  We couldn't see it, but we did see that doe chewing her cud.  We just watched each other for a while, and neither of us had the energy to harass the other, so we left her laying there.  Every once in a while there was an "overlook" like this, only there wasn't anything to see but trees.  The sign said the river was down there, and we had no reason to not believe it. 

Tiger lilies grow wild around these parts.  Make lots of fences more colorful, too.  And then here's a question for you digital camera techies.  What in the world caused that separation in that shot of the canoe rental place?  If I'd been using a film camera, I'd have claimed it was a double exposure, only it doesn't look quite like that either.  Sheese!  The older I get the less I know about things I thought I knew things about.  Or something.

And man, did that place have canoes to rent!  Couple of trailers full in the background, you can see the nose of a bus that obviously takes people someplace pulling a trailer load of canoes (hopefully UPriver), and then stacked like cordwood here in the trees.  Nice enough young people running the place.  Gave us a brochure of all their rates and plans and stuff like that.

Enough with the outdoor world.  Let's go home and enjoy the air-conditioning and a nap.  Got a midnight tour to take (no cameras allowed) and need to be there by 11 p.m.