Following Morgan

Once upon a time, a hostile military force passed less than four miles from where I live. I wasn’t here at the time. I wasn’t anywhere yet. It was 1863 and Confederate soldiers commanded by General John Hunt Morgan were on their way to reaching as far north as any Confederate soldiers ever would. That would occur on July 26 when Morgan and what was left of his troops were captured near Salineville, Ohio. On Monday, my friend, Terry, and I set out to retrace the Indiana and Ohio portions of Morgan’s three-state raid. Even though it was a slaveholding state, Kentucky did not join the Confederacy so Morgan was technically in enemy territory as soon as he entered the state but things really got interesting when he crossed the Ohio River. That’s where Terry and I started our raid following.

In the opening photograph, which looks across the Ohio River into Indiana from Brandenburg, KY, the raid is the subject of the metal marker and is noted on the stone marker. Both are overshadowed by a seventy-foot Confederate Veterans Monument that was moved here from Louisville, KY, in 2016. Louisville was beginning to think that distancing itself from the Confederacy might be a good idea but not so Brandenburg. Plaques at the monument’s new location tell its original history along with the story of its move. A “Southern Causes for the Civil War” plaque has a noticeable Confederate spin but does present something of a list of perceived causes. A “Northern Causes for the Civil War” plaque properly identifies a cause as “resistance to southern succession” then fills the panel with “things the Yankees did that pissed us off”.

Morgan spent eighteen days traveling through Indiana and Ohio. We spent four. We were traveling faster — and more comfortably — of course, plus we had the advantage of a path marked by signs and documented in guidebooks. The books used were “The John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail in Indiana” by Lora Schmidt Cahill and “Morgan’s Raid Across Ohio” by Lora Schmidt Cahill and David L. Mowery. The signed route and the route described in the books do occasionally differ. I suspect that the signed route bypasses some of the rougher roads but I’m not certain of that and there may be other reasons for differences. Whatever the reasons, the differences are not many. We stopped at most of the sites marked by interpretive signs or called out in the books but did miss a few — sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident. Only a few of those stops are covered in this post. It’s a brief recounting of our “raid”, not Morgan’s.

This is the Battle of Corydon Historic Site. I’ve included it to point out that the flag being flown to represent the Confederacy is the first official flag of the Confederate States of America. It is often referred to as the “Stars and Bars”. Artifacts from the steamboat Alice Dean, which Morgan sank after using it in crossing the Ohio River, are displayed here.

In the spirit of cordless phones, unleaded gas, and mirrorless cameras, this is a bridgeless creek. Terry looked over the ford at Big Graham Creek and spoke with a mother and a couple of kids beside the creek before deciding to take the plunge. Just as we started across, a pickup appeared on the opposite bank and entered the water without a pause. He passed us mid-stream on our left as a Jeep pulling a trailer followed us. Indiana may have to post some “congested ford” signs if that level of traffic continues.

Apparently, I grabbed no photos of the trail signs in Indiana. These are in Ohio. The first is at the Harrshaville Covered Bridge which was one of the few bridges crossed but not burned by the raiders. It was renovated in 2013. The U-turn sign is near Rock Springs Park where some of the raiders rested briefly. I’ve included it to show how well the driving tour is marked.

This is Buffington Island Battlefield Memorial Park. This is where things started to unravel for Morgan. Union forces met up with the raiders as they attempted to cross the Ohio River into the recently established (June 20, 1863) West Virginia. Some made it, some were captured, and some, including Morgan, escaped to run around Ohio for another week. “Run” is the appropriate word as Union troops were in close pursuit of the raiders from now on. Read the plaque on that stone marker here.

Here are a few of the more — but not most — interesting roads we traveled in Ohio. The low-water bridge on Hivnor Road over Island Run is as close as we came to a ford in the state.

Morgan’s men were involved in multiple skirmishes with federal troops, local militia, and even civilians. An encounter with Union forces at Old Washington left three of them dead. All three are buried in the town cemetery. In the past, these graves were marked by the X-barred Confederate Battle Flag, which has pretty much been usurped by modern white supremacists. I don’t know when the change was made. Here‘s a photo from 2010. There’s a closer look at one of those flag holders here.

The “Stars and Bars” was replaced as the official Confederate flag on May 1, 1863. It was not the official flag during any part of Morgan’s raid although it was undoubtedly carried by most of his troops. Here‘s a picture, taken at a spot nearer the end of the trail, of the flag, known as the “Stainless Banner”, that replaced the “Stars and Bars”. Of course, it’s unlikely that all flags were replaced in just a couple of months so any official Confederate national flag flown during the raid was probably the “Stars and Bars”. However, the flags at Old Washington and at the Corydon battle site contain just seven stars. That was indeed the way things started, but by November 28, 1861, long before Morgan headed north, the count had grown to thirteen. These flags are a welcome change from the battle flag and are closer to being the national flag at the time these guys died, but they’re still not quite right.

The yellow sign might mark the beginning of the most interesting road we traveled. The sign is itself rather interesting. “GPS route” is not an official designation so neither is “Not a GPS route. This and similar phrases seem to be a way of trying to tell truckers that, if their GPS is sending them down this road, it’s probably wrong. The road is quite steep and winding and neither Terry nor I got any pictures. We did get some shots at the bottom where Gould Road accompanies Long Run underneath the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad into Mingo Junction.

ADDENDUM Sep 3, 2022: This trip finally made me do something that I had been threatening. I bought a dashcam. Although I clearly do not have it mastered, I did get a video of this section on my second visit since our Morgan themed outing. Evidence that I’ve not mastered the camera is shown in the lack of sound and GPS and speed information but the “interesting road” can be seen here.

There was still a little daylight when we reached the point where Morgan and his remaining troops were captured. Terry took aim on the surrender marker and so did l. The plaque is here.

We pretty much used all the available daylight on each of the four days we spent covering the trail. The first three days had been completely dry and we even dodged much of the rain that started appearing on the afternoon of the fourth. We attributed our good luck regarding the rain to a black cat that had started to cross our path then stopped and turned around. We didn’t realize just how lucky we were until we got home. Wind and rain picked up as we drove from that “END” sign to our motel in Carrolton, but once we arrived, we temporarily lost all interest in weather. And weather wasn’t much of a factor when we drove home the next day. I was shocked when Terry called to tell me he had learned that several tornados had been sighted in Jefferson County on the day we reached the trail’s end. I was even more shocked to discover that, roughly half an hour before we took our surrender marker photos, a tornado had damaged twenty-three homes, a church, and a business about twenty-five miles away in Wintersville. Apparently, that cat turned around just in time.

ADDENDUM 26-Oct-2021: Even though this outing was not documented with daily posts in this site’s journal section, much of the mechanics behind it were pretty much the same as trips documented there. That includes the routing and tracking that allow locator maps to be made. So, I’m adding a locator map because I can.

My Caboodles — Chapter 5
Preble County Covered Bridges

The Caboodles series was conceived as something to fill in otherwise empty weeks with subjects from completed outings. But, like every other rule connected with this blog, that was far from ironclad, and about halfway through Tuesday’s visits to the eight covered bridges in nearby Preble County, I realized that I would have a legitimate caboodle at day’s end. I decided to use the designation in the weekly post to create the blog’s first-ever real-time caboodle.

Once upon a time, there were approximately 3,500 covered bridges in Ohio. More than 95% of them are gone but that still leaves nearly 150 standing. Eight of those are just to my north in Preble County. On Tuesday, I headed to the county seat of Eaton and had breakfast at the cleverly named and jam-packed Eaton Place where I’m quite certain the waitresses knew everybody’s name but mine. From there I headed to the nearest of the bridges barely a mile away.

1. Roberts Covered Bridge is one of only two Preble County Covered Bridges that are closed to traffic but its claims to celebrity go far beyond that. It is one of only six remaining double-barreled covered bridges in the country and is the oldest of those. The only covered bridge of any sort that is older is the Hyde Hall Covered Bridge in New York, and it is older by a mere four years. Roberts Bridge, obviously the oldest in Ohio, was built in 1929. The Hyde Park Bridge was built in 1825. The bridge was moved here in 1990 from its original location south of Eaton.

2. I’d entered approximate coordinates for each of the bridges into my GPS and proceeded to visit them by heading to whichever was closest. That method next took me to the Christman Bridge a little north of Eaton. Numerous bridges were damaged by a major storm in 1886, and one man, Everett S. Sherman, was contracted to rebuild fifteen of them. That helps explain why the Roberts Bridge is the only pre-1886 bridge standing and also explains why six of the currently standing bridges were built by Sherman. He built this one in 1895

3. The Geeting Covered Bridge was built in 1894 to replace a ford and foot log over Price’s Creek. Floor beams have been broken by overloaded trucks and in 1969 an over-height truck took out some of the roof but the bridge has been repaired every time.

4. It’s fairly obvious that this is the other currently standing bridge not open to traffic. The Dixon’s Branch Covered Bridge does remain quite useful, however, having been moved to the Lewisburg Community Park and put to work as a shelter house. Although there is a parking area right next to the bridge, I initially missed it and ended up walking across much of the park from another lot. That was actually a good thing since I would have otherwise missed this bit of artwork which I’m guessing is from storm-damaged trees.

5. The Warnke Covered Bridge is the northernmost in the county and is the last bridge Everett S. Sherman built. Apparently, it was not one of the jobs resulting from the 1886 flood but was undertaken to repair more localized damage due to an 1895 flood. In this case, repair meant a whole new bridge.

6. The Brubaker Covered Bridge is the only one of Preble County’s older covered bridges to have more than a single small opening in its sides, and even it wasn’t always that way. It is the covered bridge equivalent of stone ‘S’ bridges seen on the National Road and elsewhere. Construction methods of the time placed bridges at right angles to the stream they crossed which sometimes forced the roadway to curve as it approached the bridge. That wasn’t a big deal for pedestrians or horses but became a big deal when automobiles started flying along at tens of miles per hour. The greatly widened openings allowed motorists to see and be seen. There was a rack of Preble County bridge brochures at every one of the covered bridges but the one pictured at the beginning of this post was here.

7. Everett S. Sherman built the Harshman Covered Bridge over Four Mile Creek in 1894. Like most of the Preble County bridges, it’s on a nice straight road that provided a through-the-bridge view in both directions. And, also like most of those bridges, there is a mid-span opening that provides a nice up-the-stream view to anyone traveling slow enough to see it.

8. Had I spent some time working out a full route, I would have probably ended my bridge tour at the northern edge of Preble County then slipped into my birth county (Darke) to do some visiting. As things turned out I’m kind of glad that this was the last bridge of the day because it really is the oddball of the bunch. It looks modern because it is. It was built in 2012. It mimics nineteenth-century bridges in its use of the Burr Arch truss design. It is built of wood so the covering can be justified as protection just as it was in the nineteenth century. There are, of course, other ways of protecting wood today as well as other bridge-building materials. I’m not a fan but neither am I a hardcore opponent of bridges of this sort. It is hardly the only retro-bridge in the country. They are what they are.   

Smooth As Glass

Not long ago, I read about Jack Pine’s Glass Pumpkin Festival in a Make The Journey Fun blog post and thought it interesting but just a bit far away for a casual outing. Then City Beat published an article on it that renewed my interest but didn’t make it any closer. The weather, however, did. Right on cue, temperatures plummeted into the 40s on Wednesday, the first day of autumn, and stayed there Thursday. Possible rain was predicted for Saturday and Sunday. Grasping at Friday’s sunny and 70 seemed a very logical thing to do and the two-hour drive to the festival became a very logical way to do it.

I had not signed up in advance so didn’t make it into the reserved parking area but walking from the overflow area was hardly a hardship and the $5.00 parking fee was the only thing even remotely resembling an admission charge. That’s Pine’s studio and production facility in the first picture. The “pumpkin patch” pointed to by the arrow in front of the biggun in the second picture is shown in the third. It’s where pumpkins and other products of the Pine studio are displayed and offered for sale.

Pumpkins and pumpkin-shaped items are naturally the biggest sellers at this time of year. The theme for the 2021 Pumpkin of the Year is “Celebrate Life”. A number of them are lined up in the second picture. No two alike, but no two totally dissimilar.

There are some real pumpkins in the patch and some of those are quite impressive.

Glass pumpkins outnumber the organic kind and will undoubtedly outlast them, too.

After making a pass through the Pumpkin Patch, I roamed among the other vendors taking glorious photos of the sunlight sharing itself with their glass and metal art. I captured a pumpkin ice cream cone held high in front of the place where I bought it and took pictures of the fellow who played guitar and sang while I ate it. I entered the studio and recorded several phenomenal photos of the talented glass blowers and the gorgeous objects of art they produced. Then I misplaced the SD card containing those photos. This photo taken with my phone is all I’ve got. The festival continues through today (Sunday) so there’s time for you to take your own pictures. Or find some in the parking lot.

ADDENDUM 27-Aug-2022: The chances of finding pictures in the parking aren’t as good as they once seemed. The lost SD card was found and turned into its own post for Halloween. It’s here

Kim’s (Is) Back

Not only is Kim’s Classic Diner back in operation, owner Kim Starr is back at the helm. After years of wanting to own a diner, a few more years shopping for the right one, and another year moving and rehabbing a 1946 Silk City, Kim seemed to be living her dream. That dream, however, was put on hold about a dozen years ago so that Kim could devote all of her energy to helping her daughter deal with life-threatening heart and lung issues. Now it is those threats that have been put on hold — hopefully forever — as daughter helps mom bring her diner back to life.

There were attempts to keep things going without Kim’s involvement. Over the years, the diner was leased to three different operators but all three failed as a business, a responsible leasee, or both. I remember two of them but must have missed the third one entirely. I know it can’t be easy to make a classic diner go in a town of well under 3,000, but every time I drove through Sabina and past the closed business, I thought to myself that this place would be hopping if Kim was still here.

Well, Kim is here now, and while the place may not yet be hopping all the time, it apparently is some of the time. Employees spoke of being “swamped” on occasion and a scan of the diner’s Facebook page shows that the daily specials have “SOLD OUT” more than once since the August 20 reopening. I was there on Friday for breakfast. It wasn’t swamped but I sure was not alone. I did my normal dawdling while other customers came and went and I think there were always between five and ten people eating with me.

My Friday visit was just one day shy of the eighteenth anniversary of the original opening. One of the reasons Kim had picked the second anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks for her opening date was the diner’s New York history. I was happy to see articles about that history back on the walls and especially happy to see that three mugs from those days (delivered to Kim by a visiting waitress) were back on the shelf. These were among the items that had gone home with Kim for safekeeping during her absence from the diner.

In addition to being one of the coolest diners within my extended neighborhood (It’s about 40 miles straight up US-22), Kim’s is special to me for another reason. It was the subject of the first of four Diner Days articles I wrote for American Road Magazine between 2006 and 2008. It was, in fact, the very first thing of mine published to the general public. In that article, I spoke of the use of car names for breakfast selections, and I am happy to report that that is once more the case. This time I had a Mercury.   

The Berlin Masterpieces in Cincinnati

This post’s title is a take-off of the title of an exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum the full and accurate title of which is Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America. At the heart of the exhibit is the story of a wildly popular, though somewhat controversial,1948 tour of paintings with its own title: Masterpieces from the Berlin Museums. The tour did not reach Cincinnati although two of the fourteen cities it did reach, Cleveland and Toledo, were in Ohio and there is a major Cincinnati connection.

The picture of General Eisenhour looking over some of the paintings that the Nazis had hidden away is at the entrance to the exhibit. On the other side of the wall it is mounted on, there is a timeline of the Nazis’ rise and fall that ends with the Masterpieces from the Berlin Museums tour. Two items from late 1943 are “Allies invade Italy”, in September, and “Monuments, Fine Art, and Archives section (Monuments Men) of the U.S. Army is established”, in December. The Monuments Men (the subject and title of a 2014 movie) set out to locate and protect artworks at risk of being destroyed by the Nazis.

Thousands of items were located, some in a large salt mine, and brought together at Wiesbaden, Germany. This is where the Cincinnati connection comes in. The director of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point was Cincinnatian Walter I. Farmer. By itself, his work in documenting pieces of art and preparing them for return to their owners would have been noteworthy but there was something more.

When he became aware of plans to ship a large number of paintings to the U.S. for safekeeping, Farmer organized thirty-two Monuments Men to produce the Wiesbaden Manifesto which protested what Farmer feared was “spoils of war” type treatment of the European treasures. Smithsonian Magazine calls this “the only act of protest by Army officers against their orders during the entirety of the Second World War”. Although it was eventually published, the manifesto was initially suppressed by Farmer’s superiors. The paintings were shipped to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and placed in storage. As plans formed to return the paintings to Germany, it was decided to put them on display before their departure. An exhibit at the National Gallery was so popular that the U.S. Congress took notice and actually legislated the tour of thirteen additional museums. All 202 paintings were returned to Germany at the conclusion of the tour. 

Photos of “The Berlin 202” are displayed on a wall near the center of the exhibition. Four of the actual paintings, on loan from the State Museums of Berlin, are on display. The exhibit is fleshed out with other paintings in CAM’s possession by some of the artists contained in the 202. Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America runs through October 3, 2021.

Third Time Was Charming

I finally got myself back to the garden. On Friday, I made my third visit to the Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield, OH. It took two nudges. One came from that source-of-many-things, Jim Grey’s blog. Jim makes a weekly “Recommended Reading” post that I always scan but confess to not clicking as many links in it as I used to. That’s no reflection on the quality of Jim’s recommendation but a combination of his (and his readers’) increased interest in film cameras and my decreased unallocated reading time. I clicked through on one of his July 24th recommendations and got hooked on a blog that I fully expect to quickly lead to at least one more post here along with a fuller story. I subscribed to the RSS feed which instantly brought me several recent articles, including one about a visit to the Hartman Rock Garden. That article is here. Thanks, Jim and Brandi.

The second nudge came from an issue of Echoes, the Ohio History Connection magazine, which I had received but not yet read. Inside, a six-page article titled “Channeling a Creative Spirit” told of Ben Hartman’s creative response to finding himself jobless in the 1930s during the Great Depression. I don’t credit that pair of nudges with anything magical or supernatural but I do credit them with making me think of Springfield when an idle Friday and an open blog slot came along. 

The garden started with the cement fish pond in the middle of the first photo at right. Ben was an accomplished molder at the Springfield Machine Tool Company when the depression hit. He was laid off in 1932 at age 48 and built the pond to fill his suddenly empty days. He moved on from the pond to figures and structures made of stones and other found items. Once he started building, he never stopped. His creations came in all sizes. These pictures are of some of the largest. At fourteen feet, the cathedral at the back corner is the garden’s tallest structure. A model of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” fills one of its many niches. The castle beside it is only a couple of feet shorter. It is believed to be based on a picture on a postcard that his wife, Mary, received.

Ben returned to the foundry in 1939 but died of silicosis just five years later. Mary maintained the garden until her death in 1997. What followed was about ten years of neglect. The deterioration was nearing its peak when I made my first visit in 2005. The picture at left is from that visit. The deterioration ended just a few years later when preservation-minded Kohler Foundation purchased the property in 2008. Following restoration, ownership of the garden was transferred to Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden, and a grand reopening was celebrated in June of 2010.

Two of the garden’s most iconic structures are the Tree of Life and the Hart(heart)MAN logo.

Today the Tree of Life was somewhat obscured — quite beautifully — by tall canna lilies. Here it is on my second visit in 2011. The cactus-like structure promotes the three things that Ben thought important in life. One arm holds a school and the other a church. In the center, the shield and eagle represent country. Ben estimated that this structure contains approximately 20,000 stones.

This is probably the most underappreciated structure in the whole garden. That’s because it looks exactly like an ordinary wooden picket fence but it isn’t. The entire fence — all 410 pickets — is concrete and Ben said it was one of the most difficult of the garden’s structures to build.

The structures in the garden look every bit as good as they did immediately following Kohler’s restoration and the landscaping looks even better. Those “friends” are doing a wonderful job. In addition to maintaining and enhancing the garden, they have produced an excellent “Guide Book and Map” that is available near the entrance. There is also a “Kids Tour” booklet available on site plus it and both pre- and post-tour worksheets can be downloaded. Admission is free but there is a donation box and this is certainly a place that deserves your support if you are able.


You may have noticed that the Hartman Rock Garden was not the primary reason I was in Springfield in either 2005 or 2011. Since I included some then-and-now garden pictures, I’m including a then-and-now of my reason for the 2011 trip. The 2005 trip was to see a temporary exhibit so there is no then-and-now. The 2011 outing was to check on the progress of the Ohio Madonna of the Trail monument’s move from its location at Snyder Park to downtown Springfield. In 2011 she was still at Snyder Park but was all packed and ready to go. I’ve since photographed her several times in her new home and today I did it again.

Book Review
Tracing a T to Tampa
Denny Gibson

Just like all but one of my previous books, Tracing a T to Tampa is a travelogue. Unlike any of those books, it is not about following a specific road or reaching specific destinations. It is about following a single specific trip. That trip is one made by my great-grandparents in 1920 in a Model T Ford. Throughout the 1920 journey, my great-grandmother sent a series of letters to her daughter in which town names were often included in her reports of what they were seeing and doing. Those town names allowed me to roughly reproduce their route. There are multiple reasons why my reproduction is a rough one. One is that roads have changed in the intervening years and another is that I usually had to guess at the path they took between the towns my great-grandmother mentioned. Some of those guesses are almost certainly wrong but proving it, should you be so inclined, would not be easy. Parts of the 1920 trip were clearly on the Dixie Highway and National Old Trails Road although neither is identified by name in the letters.

Frank and Gertrude, my great-grandparents, headed south from their western Ohio home and entered Florida almost directly south of Valdosta, GA. They reached Jacksonville and Miami on the east coast then crossed the center of the state to check out Tampa. Despite the book’s title, Tampa was not their stated destination when they left home but it was more or less where their exploration of new Flordia territory came to an end. The rest of their time in Florida would be spent mostly revisiting places from just a few “base camps”. 

I began the trip chronicled in this book on the exact 100th anniversary of the original: November 4, 2020. The original was four months long; the recreation a little less than four weeks. My great-grandparents reached Tampa after a little more than a month on the road. They would leave Florida a little more than two months later and spend just over two weeks getting home. Although they left Florida on the same path that brought them there, they would move away from it in the middle of Georgia to visit the nation’s capital in Washington.

Tracing a T to Tampa is illustrated with more than 100 photographs; primarily from the 2020 trip. There are, however, several historical photos mixed in. A transcript of the original letters is included.

1920 and 2020 can both be considered “interesting times”. Both contained a presidential election and were in a period of considerable racial unrest. 2020 was in the middle of a major pandemic and one had just ended in 1920. 1920 was also made interesting by the recent ending of a worldwide war and the passage of the 18th and 19th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. All of these are noted, but not dwelled upon, in the book.

Tracing a T to Tampa, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2021, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 217 pages, ISBN 979-8739822550.

Signed copies available through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted even if you didn’t purchase the book there. Other Trip Mouse books described here.

Trip Peek #114
Trip #159
Corner to Corner to Corner II

This picture is from my 2020 Corner to Corner to Corner II trip. The corners involved are the southwest and northeast corners of Ohio and the II identifies this as a repeat of an earlier outing. The first Corner to Corner to Corner was in 2001. It was just the third trip documented on this site and was partially a practice run for a much larger trip that would follow in four months. Similarly, this trip, the first of the COVID-19 riddled 2020, could be considered a test run for a larger trip planned for two months in the future. Pretty much by coincidence, the larger trip being prepared for in both instances was a retrace of a trip taken by my great-grandparents in 1920. In what was perceived as a way to limit exposure to COVID, the trip was organized around two nights at a motel near Medina. I reached the motel on the first day by following US-42 north and returned home on the third day by following OH-3/3C Highway south. in between I followed those same roads in and out of Cleveland and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #112
Trip #21
Impromptu PA

This picture is from my 2004 Impromptu PA trip which was exactly what the title says. It started with an impromptu work trip that put me in the middle of Pennsylvania a few days ahead of the Memorial Day weekend and finished with a drive home that filled the weekend. On Friday, I headed north through some interesting small towns to reach US-6 which I would follow west until it crossed US-62. US-62 took me to Ohio where I hugged the north bank of the big river till I was back in home territory. The photo is of the Sterling-built diner in Wellsboro, PA, on Route 6. The just-completed World War II memorial was being dedicated that Saturday and a real treat was attending a ceremony in Smethport, PA, that was coordinated with the events in D.C. On Memorial Day, I saw the very tail end of the parade in Portsmouth, OH. In between, I checked out the reconstructed Fort Steuben and the Ohio River Museum in Marietta.


Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #111
Trip #4
Little Miami

This picture is from my 2001 Little Miami River day trip. As this was only my fourth documented trip, I was still sorting out just how I wanted to handle things. In fact, this trip was undertaken primarily for practice and experimentation rather than for sightseeing and discovery. My starting point was near where the Little Miami River enters the Ohio River and I followed the smaller stream from there to its source. That source is not too far from the pictured Historic Clifton Mill.

I really got a kick out of reviewing the twenty-year-old trip to produce this Trip Peek. Of particular interest were glimpses of the abandoned Peters Cartridge Company and the rustic-looking Train Stop bar. The long-empty factory was recently given a new life with the opening of Cartridge Brewing and the Train Stop got a new owner and major improvements a few years ago and is now a popular riverside stop called the Monkey Bar.


Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.