In and Around Zanesville

We spent the weekend parked at the Moose in Zanesville - great spot. We highly recommend it to our fellow Moose RVers. We went in for their Friday night dinner special which was out of this world. It consisted of melt-in-your-mouth roast beef and gravy, real homemade mashed potatoes, and succotash! For those of you who aren't familiar with succotash, it's a mixture of corn and lima beans. Good stuff.

We also found this sign for our friend Max who always told his kids they were having fried bologna for dinner.


Zanesville is located at the confluence of the Muskingum and Licking river. In 1814 the original Y-Bridge was constructed to handle the crossing of these waterways. We went up to the overlook to get a picture of the current bridge, but I liked the one on the cover of the visitors guide better. I sure they won't mind.


Ron is very interested in arrowheads and the making of them. Near Zanesville is Flint Ridge where the Native Americans quarried flint which they used to make arrowheads and other tools. All over this area are distinct depressions which are their pits from 2000 years ago, covered with a layer of dirt over the years. The visitor center was built over one of these pits that had been excavated to show how it looked then. Don't ask me why I didn't take a picture of that - it would have been a good one.

What I learned was that flint isn't always grey. At Flint Ridge it comes in many colors.


Then we headed over to the Newark Earthworks, a system of prehistoric ceremonial Indian mounds. The section open to the public is a circle 1200 feet in diameter with 8 to 14 foot high earthen walls. Amazingly, most of the rest is used as a golf course. Here's a picture of an artist's rendering of the complex.

The circle that we saw is the one way up in the right corner, so you can imagine the size of this.

Speaking of size, then I had to drive by the headquarters for Longaberger, makers of fine baskets. You have to admire a company who builds a seven-story picnic basket for their executive offices.

When I was in Columbus for business in my former life, I went to the Longaberger Homestead where they make the baskets. At the time, I didn't know about the headquarters. Can you imagine my thoughts when, driving through rain and clouds, suddenly I saw a giant basket in the foggy distance. I thought I was seeing things.

Returning to the National Road from my former post, we found an original section that had been bypassed when route 40 was built. I love the looks of the brick and nice curbing, but it was a bit bumpy to drive on.


Then we found the Fox Creek "S" Bridge, one of the few original bridges on the National Road not destroyed by the construction of Route 40. They built the bridges on the National Road to cross the water at a 90 degree angle, even if the road approached at a different angle.


Lastly, if my father's neighbor Nancy is reading this blog, here are the flowers that I bought for her. Don't they look nice? To bad I couldn't give them to her.