The first time I saw a picture of the Serpent Mound was when I was a kid growing up in the Caribbean. It was in a history textbook, and gave a few details, but I remember just thinking how interesting it was. And then ten years later I got to see the thing in real life.

Southern Ohio is much more striking than the Northwest, with rolling heavily wooded hills, and the Serpent Mound is out in some of the prettiest fall travel area there is in Ohio. When you get to the park there is a great deal of the usual stuff, maps and explanations of archeologists best information about the mound, but what is fun about this park is they have this massive observation tower that you climb up until you are above the treeline.

Then you look down out on this hill and there it is.

On the one hand, it's just a mound.

On the other hand you stand there looking at the effigy and wondering what those people were like, or thought, or why exactly they built it and I was glad I got to see it, and it's still one of the coolest things I've done in Ohio.