6/23/13: Sunday, June 23: 'Cross the Wide Ohio: This has been a strange day of intensely muggy heat, when sweat dripped off my face and hair in fat, plentiful drops as I readied Maybelline for travel from southwestern Pennsylvania to southwestern Ohio. (Actually, it did last night, too.)

   After a brief run through the last of southwestern Pennsylvania, a large sign over the highway welcomed travelers to West Virginia. But the segment of road actually in that state was so short that I whisked out of it and into Ohio without noticing anything but the immense Ohio River, once a highway to settling a West so far east that it is hard to imagine its ever having been "the West." If there was a welcome sign for Ohio, I never saw it.

   The terrain grew less and less hilly, till here, at the Brookville KOA near Dayton, there are not even rolling hills left. It's still green, and there are quite a few trees, but it's mostly fields and towns along I-70. No Clamtowns; no HF, G&GRH; now I'm starting to miss them.

   This campground is very well-shaded, and here I am, parked in their shelter. There was a severe thunderstorm to the north, and loud thunder shook the campground for a while in the early evening. The storm brought only a brief spattering of rain here, but it was apparently bad enough elsewhere to evoke emergency warnings over the radio.

   And that's today's big excitement.