Big Bone Lick State Park

As I write I’m wearing leggins under corduroy jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and two hooded sweatshirts.  We’re at Big Bone Lick State Park in northern Kentucky, and it’s cold.   And rainy.  And has been that way the couple of days we’ve been here.  It’s also windy with gusts of up to 40 miles an hour projected for today -- not good for RV driving.   So we are going to sit tight until the weather clears (supposedly tomorrow) then head further south.

Big Bone Lick is between the tiny Kentucky towns of Rabbit Hash and Beaverlick.  We drove to Rabbit Hash -- very cool, with a mercantile, an “old stuff” store, a restaurant and an inn called “The Hashienda.”  And we must have driven through Beaverlick, but didn’t see it. 

About all these “licks:”  Salt licks were important to indigenous people, animals, and settlers, and villages sprang up near the licks.  Springs near the licks were touted as having restorative powers, so in the 1800s, health spas were common.  

Big Bone Lick is named for both the salt lick and fossilized remains of many mastodons and other big prehistoric creatures found here.  The salt attracted the animals, then the boggy conditions created by the springs made the earth jelly-like.  Heavy prehistoric animals that ventured out on the jelly often found themselves caught in a quagmire and fossil-bound.

We also made a quick trip in to the Cincinnati riverfront area when we first arrived. Since then we have been sitting pretty tight in the motor home (other than the trip to Rabbit Hash and another to post this entry) because of the weather.

Jim walks on the “Purple People Bridge,” a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Ohio River from Pete Rose Drive in Cincinnati  to Newport, Kentucky.   

A barge on the Ohio River heads toward the Purple People Bridge.

Jim walks in downtown Rabbit Hash, Kentucky.  A cat follows.