Day 40 - Mill Run to Berlin, OH

From Fallingwater we headed due west through some beautiful hill country. Before reaching the West Virginia border, we noticed an increase in the road gradients. The first one was 6% downhill slope. We've experienced this many times and have learned to manage RV even over extended distances. A couple of miles further and we encountered an 8% downhill slope. Not common, but we've been through at least a couple of these slopes before and it's not that big of a deal over a short distance. Several minutes go by and then we see 10% sign, we gasp, but luckily this was only for a mile, so I geared down to 1st and we made it just fine. Just when we thought we had seen the last of the steep slopes..............a 12%'er slaps us in the face.

This is serious business! Before we even commence the downhill festivities, I geared down to 2nd to slow our momentum to a crawl. Then, once we started our descent, I took the RV down to 1st and she started to work really HARD. Inside the cabin it was very noisy with the engine grinding just below our feet. Even in 1st gear I had to massage the brakes to control our speed. After a mile, we could see the road start to level out and it was back to smooth sailing again. This whole experience was maybe 30 minutes, but it was very intense.

We were not in West Virginia but 30 minutes before crossing the border into Ohio. I think it was the only state that we did not actually touch our feet to the ground.

Most of the drive though Ohio was gorgeous. However, as the afternoon rolled on, we could see clouds building in the west right in our path. We eventually hit the thunderstorm and got to experience some of the most intense rain I have even been in, let alone drive through. Not too far form the area pictured below, the clouds started to break up allowing the sun to peek through. While this meant we were almost out of the storm, the glare from the sun refracting through the rain made it nearly impossible to see and the traffic came to a standstill for a few minutes.

As we entered the campground, Luke snapped a picture of this giant semi-truck RV. Everything at the campsite is wet and soggy, but the rain was over.

Because the ground was so wet, we had trouble with the auto-leveling jacks sinking into the gravel. After several tries, I switched the leveling controls to manual. While I went outside to look at the levelness of the gravel, Kristen took the wheel and I asked her to back the RV up a few feet to a better spot. This was only time she drove the RV for the entire trip. She then put the leveling jacks down and the result was better, but not perfect. Since we were only staying one night, we resolved that we should live with it.

While we cooked dinner, we also knew that we need to get some laundry done. The problem was that we didn't have any more quarters, so we asked our neighbors to make some change. They were in the midst of a campfire discussion with some other people and between them we were able to gather about $5 in quarters. We had a fun discussion with them and at the end they told us to just keep our money.

After dinner, we still had many other loads of laundry to finish and finally went to be about 11PM.

#Pennsylvania #WestVirginia #Ohio #12grade