Two for Four in Ohio

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After my return visit to an outstanding Ohio museum last week, my thoughts rather naturally turned to other Ohio museums when considering activities for the mostly open following week. I settled on two I had never visited, then added a sunflower field and a nearly new member of the World’s Biggest club to create a four-stop Friday outing. Although I reached all four, only two can be counted as successful visits.

I actually knew there would be no blooming flowers at Tecumseh Land Trust before I left home. When I initially made my plans, I’d found some general information indicating that the field operated in August and September. A few days later, I learned that projected bloom dates for 2025 were near the end of September.

Of course, I considered dropping the field from my agenda, but my appetite was already aimed at one of my favorite restaurants in nearby Yellow Springs. So I stuck with the circuitous two-lane drive and breakfast at Sunrise Cafe rather than the direct but boring expressway route to my second stop. Maybe I’ll come back for a meal — with flowers — next month.

This was what the trip was more or less built around and what I anticipated being the trip’s highlight. Instead, it provided only an accidental selfie. I believe that when I first became aware of the National Barber Museum, all visits were by appointment only. At some point, regular hours on Fridays and Saturdays were added. I was disappointed when I saw the closed notice, but since I was there just a bit before the scheduled opening, I did what I probably should have done earlier. I called. I spoke, I assume, with museum director Mike Ippoliti, who explained that a lack of volunteers and his own recent foot surgery prevented normal operation at present. He expected regular hours to return in a few weeks. I wished Mike well in his recovery and headed to stop number three.

I missed the first two iterations of the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum. The first iteration was assembled in a shed at Paul A. Johnson’s home. After Johnson’s death in 2010, the nearly 3,500 sharpeners and the shed housing them were moved to the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center near Logan, OH. In 2024, the deteriorating shed was replaced by the building on the right side of the first picture. By then, the collection had grown to somewhere around 5,000 sharpeners when the widow of Florida collector Frank Paredes donated all the sharpeners he had amassed to the museum.

The incredible collection includes sharpeners I remember from my school days, and some even older than that.

Just over two months before I got there, the town of Oak Hill, OH, erected this giant acorn and declared it the World’s Largest. As far as I know, Raleigh, NC, never claimed that the big nut dropped there on New Year’s Eve was the World’s Largest, but, having some experience with that particular acorn, I was curious about how they compared. It’s not really close. The Raleigh acorn is 10 feet tall, while the height of this one is 15 feet and 5 1/2 inches. That and other statistics are noted on a nearby sign. However, when I went looking for the dimensions of the Carolina nut, I learned that some folks in Silver Springs, MD, may have a legitimate challenge to Oak Hill’s claim. Take a look here. It doesn’t appear that the Guinness record trackers were involved in any of this, so where it all will lead is unclear.

Sunflowers had yet to arrive at the Tehcumseh Land Trust, but I did find some standing tall in the Pioneer Garden at the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center, and that lets me end this post on a bright note with a bright bloom.

Book Review
A Final Valiant Act
John B. Lang

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This is the second book that I’m aware of about Medal of Honor recipient Doug Dickey. I was aware of the first one, Remembering Douglas Eugene Dickey, USMC, before its 2015 publication. I quickly bought it, but did not get my review written and posted until nearly a year later. Although A Final Valiant Act was published in 2020, I only became aware of it last fall when I spotted it in the Garst Museum gift shop. It then took me several months to get it read and reviewed. It shouldn’t have.

It’s a well-written, straightforward telling of the story. Doug enlisted in the Marines with four classmates as part of the Buddy Program, which assured they would stay together through boot camp. Lang met with the survivors of the group as he researched the story. He also spoke with members of Doug’s family and with many of the men he served with in Vietnam. These contacts provided lots of quotes and details. He also dug through military records and things like newspapers to produce a proper background for Doug’s Easter morning sacrifice. That background is so complete that the book’s dust cover calls Lang’s writing “the most detailed account of Operation Beacon Hill yet written.” I don’t doubt that, but the “detailed account” is so well woven into the flow of the story that it’s not something I would have guessed.

The book’s title comes from a phrase in Doug Dickey’s Congressional Medal of Honor citation. I suspect it is a phrase that appears in far too many award citations. In this case, it appears as part of the sentence, “Fully realizing the inevitable result of his actions, Private First Class Dickey, in a final valiant act, quickly and unhesitatingly threw himself upon the deadly grenade, absorbing with his own body the full and complete force of the explosion.” There’s more to the citation, of course, although that is the essence of it. It mentions that there was “a fierce battle” going on, that “a grenade landed in the midst of a group of Marines”, and that Doug’s actions “saved a number of his comrades from certain injury and possible death.” Lang describes that “fierce battle” and how it came to be. He puts names and personalities to the “group of Marines”, and he tells us what became of those “comrades” as they returned to their homes and eventually started having reunions. The first reunion was in Doug Dickey’s hometown, so that Doug’s parents were able to meet some of the men their son had saved. Some of the reunions that followed were held in the hometowns of other fallen comrades.

The book includes several maps and diagrams to help describe things like locations and organization hierarchies. There are even a few black and white pictures mixed in with the text. That’s nice, but they are on matte paper. What is even nicer is the section of twenty-two glossy pages containing higher quality images, many of which are in color.

When I reviewed Remembering Douglas Eugene Dickey, USMC, I recommended it, but not for everybody because of it being very comprehensive and somewhat scholarly. I have no such caveats regarding A Final Valiant Act. There are fewer historic details and less auxiliary information, but nothing central to the story is missing, and it reads more like a novel.

As mentioned several times on this website, Doug Dickey was a classmate of mine. I have attended events that honored him and read much that has been written about him. Two things from this book that I’d not heard before stood out. The common belief was that Doug fell on top of a single grenade, and that is what the Medal of Honor citation describes. But years later, when witnesses were able to compare notes, it was determined that there was a second grenade that Doug pulled under his body after falling on the first one. I was also struck by the sentence that Lang ends his book with, and with which I’ll end this review. It’s something that Doug’s mother, Leona Dickey, said when talking about her oldest son. “The guy who threw the grenade — he would have loved him, if he could have just met him.”

A Final Valiant Act, LtCol John B. Lang, USMC (Ret.), Casemate (April 28, 2020), 6.25 x 1 x 9.5 inches, 296 pages, ISBN 978-1612007571
Available through Amazon.

Back to the Bikes

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I have thought of revisiting the Bicycle Museum of America quite a few times in the more than two decades since my first visit. Sometimes it has been when I’m looking for a target for an interesting day trip, and sometimes it has been due to something more specific. The most recent specific event that triggered thoughts of the Ohio museum was my visit to the Cycle Through exhibit at the Cincinnati Art Museum. When I started getting serious about a trip to the bicycle museum, I naturally took a look at the journal for my 2002 visit and noted that I had driven a bit of OH-66 to get there, and that naturally reminded me that I had driven its full length a couple of years later on the first day of a two day trip. The museum visit journal is here. The journal for the OH-66 drive is here.

So, I headed to Piqua, OH, and the southern end of OH-66 at US-36. It has become a little fancier over the years and now sports a “BEGIN” tag. That the more famous Route 66 will reach its centennial next year is getting a lot of attention. The centennial of Ohio’s Route 66 was last year, but I missed it. I wished the route a belated 100th as I started my drive. Although I drove all of OH-66, the museum was the trip’s focus, and I did not make a lot of other stops.

Cars parked on the street in front of the museum kept me from getting a clear picture of the building. It and other older nearby buildings housing restaurants and such are well maintained and picturesque, and make New Bremen quite an attractive town. The attendant, whose name I have absolutely no excuse for not asking, was extremely friendly and helpful. One of the things I learned while planning this trip was that the museum owned one of four surviving Schwinn bicycles from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. I suspected that this might be the one I had recently seen in Cincinnati, and started to ask. I did not quite get my question fully formed before learning that not only was that customized DX Cruiser on loan from the museum, but so was every other bicycle in the display. I should have known that. The Cycle Thru! description on the Cincinnati Art Museum’s website notes that it is made up of “over 20 bicycles from The Bicycle Museum of America in New Bremen, Ohio”. Just one more thing I missed.

The museum contains a replica of an 1816 Draisine, which is the earliest known use of motion to balance on two tandem wheels. There are, of course, quite a few penny-farthings among the historic vehicles on display. When I first heard that name many years ago, I initially thought it had something to do with cost, but soon learned that it came from the idea that those big-wheeled bicycles looked like a large British penny coin paired with a small farthing coin. In the middle of all those historic bicycles is something that looks more like a farthing-penny. It’s an American Star Highwheel, which tried to make things a little safer by putting the little wheel in front. The H.B. Smith Manufacturing Company, makers of the American Star, also patented a steam-powered bicycle, and yes, I would like to see one of those.

In fairly short order, inventors applied gears, chains, and straps to eliminate the need for a huge wheel to achieve a decent speed, and the penny-farthing became a thing of the past. In addition to those on display, the museum has one on rollers with “trainer steps” for anyone wanting to give it a try. Of course, inventors did not stop inventing. A different way to go riding with your friends can be seen on the wall behind the steps. Bicycles with driveshafts existed before the nineteenth century ended, and inline skates clearly aren’t as new as you might think.

Backed by one of the museum’s windows is a replica of a monocycle from 1869. The museum also has one of just thirty existing Monovelos from 2008. Monocycles are just plain weird. Fitting between these two date-wise is a 1998 motorized version at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville.

The museum has about 800 bicycles in its collection, so even with twenty on loan in Cincinnati, there is no problem keeping a couple hundred on display. The challenge is picking which ones that will be. That’s the same challenge I have picking which photos to post. I could go on and on, but I’m going to cut it off here with a pair I have at least a tiny personal connection to. My first motorized vehicle was a 1948 or ’49 Whizzer. The one pictured is a 1950. That’s a 1949 J.C. Higgins Colorflow in the other photo. My first new vehicle was a 1960 J.C. Higgins Flightmaster that is the subject of what I believe is the most popular post ever on this blog. The Flightliner post is here. A post on the Whizzer is here. Before leaving, I learned that the museum has a 1960 girl’s Flightliner in storage. Flightliner fans, keep your eyes peeled. It could come out someday.

I did make a couple of stops beyond the museum, but they were related to my 2004 OH-66 drive rather than to OH-66 in general. Where the route ends at US-20 in Fayette, I was happy to see an “END” tag that was not there in 2004. I celebrated completing the route with a Budweiser in the same building where I celebrated in the same manner twenty-one years ago, but the name was now Freddy’s Place instead of Harry’s Tavern, and the Bud came in a can instead of a bottle.

I also repeated my dinner stop in Archbold, where Mom’s Diner was not only still in business but had a new pseudo-neon sign hanging out front. With the exception of a few details, the inside looked essentially the same. I did not record what I ate in 2004, but today I had the fish sandwich special. The place was fairly busy when I arrived and just about full when I left. That not only kept me from taking many photos, but it also interfered with my jukebox playing. In ’04, I played “That’ll Be The Day”, but today it wasn’t an option. In ’04, I had the juke box all to myself, but that wasn’t at all the case today. By the time I settled on “Rock Around the Clock”, someone had beaten me to it. My quarter went for “Mack the Knife” by Louis Armstrong and His All Stars.

Trip Peek #147
Trip #145
Route 66 Miles of Possibility Conference

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This picture is from my 2017 trip to the Route 66 Miles of Possibility Conference in Joliet, IL. This was the third MOPCon, and my second time attending. At the time, there were still questions about whether a pay-to-attend conference could succeed in a world accustomed to free festivals, but with the tenth annual MOPCon scheduled for October 2025, those questions appear to have been answered. By coincidence, the tenth MOPCon will be right where the third one was: Joliet. My 2017 guess that the idea of a pay-to-attend conference would find no takers outside of Illinois has so far proven correct.

I drove almost no Historic Route 66 getting to and from the conference. I took US-40 through Casey, IL, and checked out some of the World’s Largest things displayed there. Then it was north on US-45 for a meal at the original Burger King in Mattoon, IL. The drive home was mostly on US-35, which I picked up at its northern terminus near Michigan City, IN. In between was the conference with plenty of presentations and a Road Crew concert at the historic Rialto Theater.

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.

US 10

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I just started the journal for my first trip of 2025, and yes, I do realize that it is almost the end of July. All of the assorted reasons for the lack of travel during the first half of the year were just normal life happenings, and none were negative. Now I’m about to drive — and float — the full length of the current US-10. The floating part is on a ferry that crosses Lake Michigan as an official part of the US highway. The picture at right is clearly not of any part of a highway. It’s of Patrick Sweany at the Rumba Cafe in Columbus, OH. I bought my ticket to the show a couple of months ago and decided, since Columbus is essentially on the path from home to the east end of US-10, to make it a bon voyage bash. The show was Saturday, I drove to Bay City, MI, on Sunday, and I’m now heading west on US-10. The journal’s first day has been posted.

This entry lets blog-only subscribers know about the trip and provides a place for comments. The journal is here.

Trip Peek #146
Trip #104
Sweetheart Cruise 2012

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This picture is from my Sweetheart Cruise 2012 trip. This was my second time participating in a cruise that a group of St. Louis area road fans frequently organized near Valentine’s Day. I spent the first day reaching Mitchell, IL, to check out the recently relit Luna Cafe sign which I used for the trip’s signature photo. The following day was spent cruising in a nine-car caravan from Mitchell to Carlinville, and the next two days were spent trying to follow a straight line home. A real highlight of the cruise was my one and only meeting with Bill Shea and my only time inside his museum in Springfield, IL.

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.

My Wheels — Chapter 42
2025 Subaru Forester

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I’m thinking that we might all know people who buy a new car of the same make every few years. Maybe it’s a string of Cadillacs, or Fords, or Chevys, or something else. How boring that must be, I once thought. Then I bought two Corvettes back to back, then two Foresters. And I have now bought my third. It may look kind of boring, but seven years of advances keep it from being overly so. Even when the new features are in a familiar-looking package, learning the new tricks is not exactly boring to an old dog.

On the plus side of the changes between Foresters two and three is the addition of Android Auto. This supports connecting my phone to the car’s infotainment system. Although I still rely on a Garmin for trip routing and playback, it is really convenient to ask — by voice — for directions to a restaurant and have the route displayed on the built-in screen. That screen is nearly a foot tall and flush mounted in the dash, which I appreciate every time I’m stopped at a light next to someone in a car with what looks like a detached laptop screen stuck to their dashboard. Android Auto also provides easy access to the podcasts I follow and some other goodies, too. What the infotainment system does not provide is a CD player, and I miss that. I’ve substituted a couple of USB thumb drives filled with the content of several CDs, but I’m still thinking of buying a portable CD player.

On the negative side is the continued growth of the Forester from what I thought was its near-perfect size at its 1998 beginning, and the automatic start-stop system. Regarding size, the car is not uncomfortably huge, but it is possible that I would have been more comfortable in a Crosstrek, and that’s probably where I’ll go if and when there is another Subaru purchase for me. My previous Forester missed the addition of auto start-stop by one year. It is a feature around which I have heard the word “hate” used at least as much as with any other. I don’t hate it, but I do find it annoying, and “tolerates” probably best describes my attitude towards it.

Unlike the 2011 to 2018 trade, this move was not triggered by a collision or any other major event. There was nothing wrong with the 2018 car, but it was nearing 150,000 miles, and oil consumption was creeping higher. I knew the time was coming when I would be spending money on something. I decided it would be spent on a new car and went for the first year of a new generation of Forester rather than the middle (as with the 2011) or end (as with the 2018). I bought the car without ever having seen a 2025 model. No exciting colors are available for my desired trim level (Premium), so I went for the red to avoid the blue. They tell me that the Crimson Red Pearl on the 2025 is different from the Camellia Red Pearl on the 2011, but they sure look alike to me. It was the first 2025 delivered by my salesman and the first or second delivered by the dealership.

That was just over a year ago. The car embarked on its first road trip the next month. The opening photo was taken quite recently to mimic similar photos used in the My Wheels posts for my first two Foresters. The photos at left are from that first road trip. The first is a spontaneous snapshot taken as I walked back to the car after taking a picture of something else on the National Old Trails Road near the beginning of the trip. The second was taken near the end of the trip after a blowout ended it just a little early.

On the car’s third road trip, it was “mooed” while parked in front of the Midland Railroad Hotel in Wilson, KS. While I think the Moo Moo Subaru movement is a fun one, I have no plans to become a mooer. As this is the only time this has happened, I have donated the tiny bovine to the menagerie of similarly sized critters at my nearby Le Peep restaurant.

By the end of 2024, the new Subie had been involved in a total of five documented trips, but not a single one since then. That’s certainly not the Forester’s fault. It’s mine, and it is about to be remedied. It and I are off on our first road trip of 2025 in less than a week.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 40 — 1997 Schwinn
My Wheels Checkpoint: Chapter 41 — The Wheels So Far

Circus Time

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When I bought my ticket to the 20th Century Circus, I didn’t realize that it would be held on Renaissance Festival grounds. It wasn’t a secret. The banner on their website’s home page says “at the Ohio Renaissance Festival”, but I just wasn’t paying attention. I saw that the circus would happen in Waynesville, and although I know that is the home of the festival, I just did not make the connection. Only on the day of the show, when I went looking for detailed directions, did I realize what should have been obvious.

The big top is placed in the open field just outside the main entrance to Renaissance Village. The festival associated 1572 Roadhouse Bar-B-Q is open a couple of hours prior to show time, and the empty village (the festiva returns in August) is open if you want to roam around. I splurged and bought a Front Row ticket. Premium Seating and General Admission are also available. Premium, it appears, is row two, and general admission is row three. I’m guessing that if more tickets were sold, more rows would be added.

The 20th Century Circus advertises itself as being set in the 1920s, and some audience members were dressed in period outfits. The acts in a 1920s circus are essentially what I’d expect in a circus of any era. The evening got started with some juggling and tightrope walking, aerial acrobatics, and a little clowning around.

It seems quite possible that I haven’t seen a spinning plates act since Ed Sullivan went off the air, but, as I did then, I enjoyed watching the performer run back and forth to try to add plates while maintaining those already spinning. Although it was only for a few seconds, this guy did get plates spinning on all six sticks, but I missed getting a photo.

Balance and acrobatics are central to a variety of circus acts, and there were several impressive demonstrations of both.

As intermission neared, we were treated to a catchy little tune about that circus and carnival staple, cotton candy. Of course, a little popcorn fits in quite nicely, as well.

There was more juggling in the second half, but flaming hatchets replaced the soft balls. I never did get an in-focus shot of the performers on the rotating ladder, but I did better on the lovely song and dance duo.

The hula hoop competition between volunteers from the audience was close, even if it didn’t last too long. I think the winner made it about 1 1/2 revolutions. The other two competitors were tied at zero. Someone stood up when the knife thrower asked for a volunteer, but cooler heads prevailed. The real winner of the hula hoop contest didn’t even joke about risking an audience member interfering with her swirling balls of fire.

This looks kind of like one of the stunts from the first half of the evening but the chairs are a whole lot bigger and so is the distance to the ground when the handstand is performed. Just assembling and disassembling the tower of chairs is rather nerve wracking to watch.

No troupe members and only a few baloons were harmed during the performance. They will be back every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for the rest of July and it’s a hoot. The pulled pork (and probably the other stuff) and beer selection at 1572 Roadhouse is pretty good, too.

Herding the Wheel Horses West

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Near the end of last summer, my friend Terry, the Wheel Horse collector, sold a tractor to Bill Throckmorten of Grant King Race Shops, and I rode along to deliver it. Bill is Grant King’s nephew. He and his wife Stephanie currently own the shop. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, Wheel Horses were used at the Indianapolis 500 to move race cars in the pits and other areas. There was also a race week event featuring celebrities piloting 33 of the red tractors in a one-lap race known as the Indy 2 1/2. Because of that connection, Bill wanted a Wheel Horse for the museum at what he calls “A Working Race Shop Museum”, and to maybe move a few cars around. There is a pretty good video overview of the shop/museum and the accomplishments of Grant and Bill here.

One of Bill’s accomplishments is the cofounding of Indy Legends. After giving us a tour of that really cool museum, he invited Terry to display some of his Wheel Horses at their next event at Indianapolis Raceway Park. That event was last weekend, June 28-29, and I again got to tag along. I snapped the opening photo from where the Wheel Horses were displayed.

Friday was setup day, followed by an evening reception at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. Stephanie Throckmorten made sure we had wristbands for both the reception and access to IRP. Setting up in ninety degrees was pretty exhausting for old guys like us, although Terry dealt with it better than I did. We both took advantage of the showers at Lion’s Club Park, where we were staying, before heading to the reception.

The museum reopened less than three months ago following a year-and-a-half-long closure and $60 million renovation. One of the first areas inside the entrance is a series of simulated garages holding some very significant cars from the speedway’s history. Eddie Rickenbacker drove this 1914 Duesenberg to a tenth-place finish in 1914. Rickenbacker served as IMS President from 1927 to 1945. Jim Clark put this green Lotus on the pole in 1964, but broken suspension meant a 24th-place finish. Parnelli Jones drove the car to 2nd place in 1965. In 1977, Janet Guthrie broke the Indy 500 gender barrier, then drove this Offenhauser-powered Wildcat to a 9th-place finish in 1978.

An attendant at the entrance to the next section assures entry between presentations of a video shown on a wrap-around vertical screen. Scenes from parades, pit activity, flyovers, and race starts are combined with exhaust sounds from real cars in the area to generate a semblance of race day anticipation.

There is a mind-boggling number of cars and artifacts on display in the museum. Of course, I took a ton of pictures, but there is a lot more going on this weekend, so I am really limiting what I’m posting. Here’s a picture of the Marmon Wasp that Ray Harroun drove to victory in that first Indy 500 in 1911, and one of the Borg-Warner Trophy. Although the trophy was first presented in 1936, the winners of every 500 are represented on it. The Marmon and the Borg-Warner appear together in the photo taken from the new mezzanine.

The reception was a first-class affair with hors d’oeuvres, beverages, and opportunities to chat with museum officials and employees. Terry and I missed the first performance by the Indianapolis 500 Gordon Pipers but were there for their second outing as the reception began to slow down. They would also appear at the race track near the end of the day’s activities on Saturday.

This was the beginning of activities on Saturday. Overnight rain had sounded a lot heavier than it actually was, but some drying out was in order nonetheless. We cleared some water from our canopy, then did a little cruising and car spotting while the track was being dried. Terry posed for a picture with a Mac Tools-sponsored racer and his own “Runt Rod” racer. I believe it is the only non-stock Wheel Horse in his fleet.

All of the cars had informative placards beside them when parked, and I learned a lot by reading many of them. Only when I started writing this post did I realize how little I remembered and what a poor job of recording I did. I can tell you absolutely nothing about the gray #9 in the first picture. #20 is a 1911 National as described here. I also have a shot of #7’s descriptive information. That is almost certainly because my interest was piqued by this on its rear end. Its owners have driven most of the Lincoln Highway, and the Model T racer has been on a short stretch of the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania.

The model years I noted ranged from 1911 to 2000. Although I do not know the actual dividing lines, the on-track groups were separated by age, which also meant they were separated by speed. I have even less information to share about these middle-aged race cars than for the older cars in the previous paragraph.

There was ample time to walk around and photograph the many fabulous race cars while they were parked, and if the temperature, the humidity, or my age had been lower, I would certainly have done more of it. Many of the cars were the exact same vehicles that once ran at IMS and other tracks, while some were impressive replicas of famous cars that are probably on display in museums.

Here are a couple of pictures from the campground just before we pulled out Sunday morning. Showers and restrooms are just beyond the picnic shelter. The trailer, which serves as our bedroom, will be filled with Wheel Horses when the day ends.

There was a somewhat surprising amount of interest in the tractors. Some came from people who remembered the days when Wheel Horses roamed the pits at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and some from folks who had heard or read about it. Of course, some came from kids (and adults) who just like little tractors. The tractors were the “half-time show” for both days of the event. At Bill’s request, Terry and I drove them two-by-two through the infield during the lunch break when the track was empty.

That’s Bill Throckmorten chatting with Terry. Bill was incredibly busy throughout the weekend coordinating action on and off the track, but still managed to stop by several times to say hi and see that all was well. On more than one of those stops, he let Terry know he had an invitation to return next year. Whether that happens is very much a maybe. As we pulled out, I commented that this was one of the most fun weekends I’ve ever had, but it was also one that I was very happy to see end. Terry agreed. Age and temperature are factors, and only time, which doesn’t help with the age thing, will tell.

I have previously been involved in herding the Wheel Horses south and east.

Trip Peek #145
Trip #146
Thankful in Tennessee

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This picture is from my 2017 Thankful in Tennessee trip. This was in the style of my Christmas dinners in state parks but this time the holiday was Thanksgiving and the park was in Tennessee rather than Ohio or West Virginia. On Thanksgiving day, I drove straight to Natchez Trace State Park for the holiday buffet. I spent two nights at the park but drove to Brownsville for dinner and a nighttime peek at Billy Tripp’s Mind Field on the second day. I then spent two days getting home with time on US-45 and US-50 and stops in Paducah, KY, Metropolis, IL, and Vincennes, IN. The picture of Pin Oak Lake was taken near the turnaround point of a ranger-led hike I joined on the second day at the park.

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.