Tag Archives: Kentucky

Some Dixie Highway for Thanksgiving

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The daily rate and a two-night minimum put the kibosh on preliminary thoughts of spending Thanksgiving night at a nearby state park lodge and other things got in the way of even making a reservation for the buffet there. Even so, I went to bed on Wednesday thinking that I would call about a last minute spot in the morning. By morning, however, I was ready to acknowledge that I would rather be driving than eating and set off to cruise some bits of the Dixie Highway that I had not been on for some time. In downtown Cincinnati, I was quickly reminded of the Thanksgiving Day Race that blocks several streets including the Roebling Bridge on which the Dixie Highway entered Kentucky from Ohio. I climbed onto the interstate and picked up the old auto trail on the other side of the river.

One reason the Dixie Highway makes for a good day trip south is that two alignments exist between Cincinnati and Lexington. The original path was pretty much straight south through Dry Ridge and Corinth. At some point, a path through Falmouth and Paris was proposed and recognized as an alternative by the Dixie Highway Association. Plans were to eventually pick one or the other but the Numbered US Highways came along and the DHA disbanded before a selection was made which leaves both alignments as somewhat official.

My pathway south was on the original alignment past the old gas station in Dry Ridge, the tin tepee (with recliner) near Williamsburg, and remnants of Fisher’s Camp near Corinth.

Lexington’s Main Street, which carried the Dixie Highway, is now one way northbound so I briefly left my southbound route to photograph the camel-topped Zero Mile Marker at Main and Limestone. While there, I slipped across the street to photograph just a few of the many painted ponies (actually thoroughbred racehorses) that decorate the city. I also snapped a picture at Thoroughbred Park before leaving town.

I had originally planned to pick up the other alignment in Lexington and head home but it was still fairly early and I decided to drive on to a place I had been interested in for a while. The first picture is of the modern bridge that currently carries I-75 and US-25 over the Kentucky River. The second picture shows the 1871 bridge that carried the Richmond-Lexington Turnpike, the Dixie Highway, and US-25 across the river. The third picture was taken from Clays Ferry Overlook on the south side of the river. Jay and Ashley Webb purchased this about a year ago and the Webbs have removed hundreds of truckloads of trash and cleared away trees to make it a real overlook again. Check out their Facebook page here. I did not prepare very well for my visit and I know there’s a lot of history here that I don’t yet know. I do know that the stone wall was built by the WPA in the early 1930s. This section of the road was relocated shortly before that but after it had become US-25. I believe that this is where the Richmond-Lexington turnpike and the Dixie Highway would have run.

I’d driven to Clays Ferry because of the big cleanup and because it wasn’t much more than a dozen miles from Lexington and I drove on to Richmond because it was only a dozen or so miles farther. In Richmond, I was definitely tempted to drive the dozen or so more miles to Berea but managed to stop myself. I took the expressway back to Lexington and the southern end of that Falmouth alignment. The slightly off-route moves I’d made earlier had not actually been necessary, I now discovered. Not only did my northbound route take me right by Thoroughbred Park, the route to Falmouth begins at Main and Limestone and the Zero Mile Marker.

The Dixie Highway, as I’m sure almost everyone knows, passes right through Paris. At its southern edge, Central Kentucky Classic Cars pulled me in to drool over a 1968 Camaro, lower my sights slightly to consider a ’55 Chevy sedan, then eventually move on with the free digital photos that were a better fit for my budget. Every Paris deserves an Eiffel Tower and this Paris finally got one in the summer of 2021. At 20 feet tall, it is considerably shorter than the original in France (1024 feet), and the replica just up the road from me in Kings Island (314 feet), but it’s still pretty cool. Incidentally, the Edward Shinner Building in the background was declared the “Tallest 3-story Building in the World” by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! which explains why its top got clipped in the photo.

Much of this Dixie Highway alignment has been taken over by US-27 but a few miles south of Cynthiana it moves to the west side on Mark Road then cuts back across the US route, slips through a narrow underpass, crosses a narrow bridge, and heads straight (but not quite level) into the Kentucky countryside on Old Lair Road.

Sunset occurred almost simultaneously with my reaching Punkyville so things were starting to dim when I took this driveby shot. When I first drove this alternate alignment in 2015, I stopped and explored Punkyville and I’ve done that a time or two since but not today.

Despite increasing darkness, I stayed with the Dixie Highway through Falmouth and Independence but encountered a road closure about three miles north of the latter town. By then, even though it was not yet 5:30, full-on darkness had arrived and I abandoned the DH for a more direct route home. I grabbed a shot of the last electric overhead sign I passed so I could share ODOT’s Thanksgiving greeting. 

Got Goetta?

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This is GoettaFest. Regular readers of this blog know what goetta is. Others maybe not. A trailer at the festival had a definition painted on its side. Almost all descriptions, including the one at Wikipedia, have the name Cincinnati in them somewhere. It is very definitely a regional food.

Note that the banner says “GLIER’S GOETTAFEST”. Glier’s Meats has a near monopoly on the product in the area which, as already mentioned, has its own near monopoly. Some family cooks and a few restaurants make their own and there are other commercial producers as this 2018 article shows. Glier’s, however, is king. They own the goetta.com domain, and they own this festival.

Glier’s is a Covington, KY, company and the festival is held on Kentucky’s side of the Ohio River in Newport. The venue, appropriately named “Festival Park at the Levee”, essentially fills the area between the Taylor-Southgate Bridge and the pedestrian-only Purple People Bridge. The Daniel Carter Beard Bridge (a.k.a, Big Mac Bridge) can be seen in the background.

The festival grew to eight days in 2019 but it avoids those sluggish mid-week days with a pair of expanded weekends, July 28-31 and August 4-7. It’s also something of a music festival with bands performing full-time on stages at both ends. I was there shortly after opening on Thursday when Whiskey Daze was on the west stage and What About Jane was on the east stage.

I had to check the food listing to learn that the name of this stand was Original Corn Roast. Its offerings were many and included some goettaless items. I got my Goetta Mac from there and washed it down with Braxton’s Garage Beer.

Goetta Mac is something I’ve eaten before and will again. The Goetta Balls from Goettahaus were new to me. I won’t take extreme measures to avoid them in the future but they aren’t something I have a strong urge for.

I had wanted to try the goetta pizza but my appetite ran out before my choices did. And there were plenty of other good-looking options beyond that.

I once ate a hamburger between a split donut so maybe I could have handled this but I didn’t even consider it.

GoettaFest opens at noon today (Sun 7/31) and is back next Thursday for another four-day run. Get there while the goetta getting is good.

Big Heads on Parade

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This is one of those embarrassing moments when I experience something for the first time that has been going on for years right under my nose and is so cool I should have been attending regularly.  It’s the Mainstrasse Mardi Gras Parade in Covington, Kentucky. I’ve heard of Mardi Gras in Covington and possibly even heard there was a parade but I don’t remember. What I do remember is news reports about inebriated revelers trashing yards and peeing in bushes. It didn’t sound like a place I wanted to be. But this year I read about the parade with participants wearing gigantic papier-mâché heads and that very much sounded like something I wanted to see.

I reached the staging area with enough time to snap pictures of some of the big heads before they covered smaller heads.

Then got pictures of a few of those heads in place but not yet marching. I really don’t know just when this first began. One person I asked said, “At least ten years.” Another thought it started “around 2000”. I overheard someone telling a friend, “The last time I came down for this was twenty years ago”. I imagine I’ll eventually find something online that tells me, but not yet.

There were plenty of normal-sized heads in the parade and everybody was clearly having a lot of fun.

But it was the big heads that had gotten my attention and set the parade apart.

Most of the Mainstrasse restaurants and bars were fairly full before the parade started and became downright packed when it ended. Many had doormen posted to keep occupancy to legal levels. I moved away from the center of the festivities until I found a bar that was busy but not overcrowded and had one beer before heading home. I’ve absolutely nothing against partying in the streets for Mardi Gras but I’m too old and the street’s too cold.   

Open House at Vent Haven

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On Saturday, right after I was welcomed at the Vent Haven Museum open house, I was asked if I’d been there before.  “Yes”, I answered. “Several years ago.” I later checked to see when that earlier visit was and discovered that apparently — in my mind, today — several equals ten.

My only previous visit to the “World’s Only Museum Dedicated to Ventriloquism” occurred way back in 2011. It was during that short period when Oddment pages had not yet been totally replaced by blog posts. There is an Oddment page here. I joined a guided tour on that 2011 visit which made the information I received and shared on that Oddment page noticeably more precise and organized than what I’m posting here. That’s not at all a knock of the open house, and I encourage everyone to partake if they can. They generally do two a year and the second one for 2021 is just a month away on Sunday, June 13.

Today I’ll just share a couple of photos from each of the three open buildings. My first stop was in the building directly behind the house. It was built in the 1960s by museum founder W.S. Berger, and is the first building constructed specifically for the museum. There are hundreds of ventriloquist dummies in the building but I’ve chosen pictures of the string of past presidents and another small grouping. It is the smallest member of that grouping that caught my eye. It’s a replica of “Bull” from the TV show Night Court.

This is the collection’s first home after it was booted from the residence by Mrs. Berger in 1947. It is the garage left empty when Mr. Berger retired and sold his car. The middle picture is of eight dummies donated in the last twelve months. The museum typically gets 10-15 donated each year. There are also a few hundred dummies in this building but none more realistic looking than Penn and Teller.

Construction of the third building was started by Berger but he died before it was completed. It and the garage will be taken down later this year to be replaced by a new building that will offer several enhancements (including restrooms!). Be aware that these are not the only wall-of-bodies or shelf-of-heads photo ops in the museum which now has about a thousand residents.

I actually took this picture soon after I arrived but saved it for a closer. It’s Mike Hemmelgarn who made absolutely everyone feel relaxed and welcome.

Big To Do at Wigwam 2

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The first night I stayed at a Wigwam Village of any vintage was April 22, 2004, when I pulled into Wigwam Village #2. There was no neon outlined tepee like the one at right to greet me. I had driven down after work which put me at the village a little after 10:00 PM. The office and gift shop were in use but weren’t open that late. I retrieved the key that had been left for me in the mailbox and let myself in.

There were lights in front of the office including a neon VACANCY, OFFICE, and arrow. I have no pictures from this visit that show the neon tepee lit and I believe it was completely non-functional but my memory isn’t good enough to swear to that. I got an external shot of the office tepee that included the sign and an internal photo with owner Ivan John.

John retired and sold the motel about a year later. Things had really deteriorated prior to his 1996 takeover and the deterioration commenced anew after his departure. It might not have been immediate. The picture at right of the lighted neon tepee was taken in 2007 and I don’t know if its resurrection came before or after John left. It is the image I used to represent the village in A Decade Driving the Dixie Highway. While John ran the place, a playground and picnic tables were added and the rooms refurbished while retaining most of the original wooden furniture. Since at least 2007, I don’t believe much effort or money has been invested in improving the village until new owners came along in November.

Even if I did not know what was planned for today, I might have seen the ladder at the sign as a clue. There really isn’t much on the outside of the tepees to indicate how much work Keith and Megan have done. The grounds look neater but that’s about it. Even inside there are no dramatic changes. Bathroom fixtures have been updated but the general deep cleaning and repainting may not be immediately obvious.  My habit of posting little collages of motel rooms had not yet been established when I stayed here in 2004 and 2007 so the oldest internal view I have to compare with today‘s is one from 2009.

Megan and Keith had begun accepting a few guests in March but today was a sort of grand-opening of Historic Wigwam Village No. 2 with nine wigwams revitalized and rented. A tepee-shaped cake and some very accurate cookies really added to the occasion.

Megan and Keith each spent a few minutes talking about their experiences during their fairly brief ownership and about their plans for the future. Then they threw the switch that illuminated the recently replaced neon on the sign. It looked good immediately and even better as the sky darkened. In his remarks, Keith noted that they thought bringing the sign to life was an important and highly visible indicator of their intentions to bring the whole village back to life. I think he’s right and it seems that a lot of others do too.

200 Breweries

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I like beer. I like beer well enough to be a Supreme Court justice although my other qualifications are rather weak. I’ve had favorites from time to time. I was pretty much a Stroh’s guy in the 1960s and ’70s, then became a big fan of Christian Moerlein Select when Hudepohl introduced it in 1981. But I’ll confess to never being entirely faithful to a single brand. My roving tastebuds would sometimes be led into temptation by an exotic label or a shapely bottle. Today, encouraged and aided by the craft beer explosion, I’m downright promiscuous. Several years ago I began using Utappd, a phone app that allows me to track the various beers I’ve tried, and I’ve accumulated a decent score. I have, since January of 2014, consumed a measurable amount of 1202 different beers.

Yes, that’s decent, but it pales next to some others. Just within my small circle of Untappd cohorts, Brian is over 1600, Sara is pushing 1900 (and now only logs on special occasions), and Nick is well past 3000. I’ll never catch them, of course, and I’m OK with that. If nothing else, when someone accuses me of being too fickle in my drinking, I can point to Nick or Sara or Brian and say, “But not like them!”

Besides, as the title of this post indicates, I have other things to brag about. I enjoy logging different venues about as much as I like logging beers and that goes double for breweries. In the beginning, I didn’t watch closely. I was almost halfway to the current count before it registered with me that logging breweries was something I was doing more than most. I completely missed the 100 brewery milestone but did note number 115 with a weak joke about Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream. I’ve been much more attentive as I approached completion of the second hundred and my thoughts have been on Zappa rather than Dylan. It’s not only giving me an opportunity to brag but an opportunity to recount some of the breweries I’ve seen.

For starters, here are numbers 1 and 200. My first check-in of Lock 27 Brewing was on January 31, 2014. It was not, of course, the first brewery I ever visited. I have vague memories of being inside the recently departed Hudepohl brewery several decades ago and I toured the oldest brewery in the US, Yuengling, back in 2005. A blog post from just about a year before I joined Untappd (Something’s Brewing in Cincy) describes visits to five breweries and mentions a couple more. And there were others. Lock 27 was simply the first brewery I visited after joining Untappd. My 200th brewery was the part-circus part-brewery Bircus. It’s in a converted movie theater just across the river in Kentucky and is more upfront about their tumbling and juggling than most breweries.

Dayton, Ohio, where Lock 27 Brewing is located, is also home to some truly unique producers of beer. Carillon Brewing Company (#24 12/8/14) is part of Carillon Historical Park and brews beer the old fashioned way. I mean the 160-year-old fashioned way. With the exception of piped-in water, the operation duplicates a brewery of the 1850s. I did a full blog post, History by the Pint, on my first visit. Pinups & Pints (#– 4/8/15) is a tiny 15-gallon operation that offers one choice of beer at a time. Unfortunately, Untappd had not yet identified it as a brewery when I was there so it is not one of my 200 (It would have been #30). Even so, how could I not include “The World’s Only Strip Club – Brew Pub” in this post? And Untappd does now recognize it as a brewery. The third picture is of Ohio’s first and the nation’s second co-op brewpub shortly before it opened. Fifth Street Brewpub (#3 2/12/14) is the only brewery I currently “own” a tiny piece of (it’s a co-op!) and the one with the most Untappd check-ins. Here‘s a picture from the most recent of those check-ins.

I used the word ‘currently’ in the preceding paragraph because I once owned a few shares of the ahead-of-its-time Oldenberg Brewery in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. Somewhere I have a beautiful and totally worthless stock certificate for the brewery that closed in 2001.

Two other visited breweries deserve shout-outs because of their locations. Silver Gulch Brewing (#79 6/29/16) and Kona Brewing (#123 4/7/17) are, respectively, the USA’s northernmost and southernmost breweries. I claim a bonus point for reaching these outposts within a year of each other. I have yet to reach the westernmost (Kauai Island) or easternmost (Lubec) breweries in the US.

Maybe I’ll make it to three or four hundred or beyond. I’ve started the second 200 like I started the first, with Lock 27. In 2017, a second location, which Untappd counts as a separate brewery, was opened just outside the Dayton Dragons ball field. The Dragons are an affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds who are celebrating 150 years of professional baseball this year. A few months ago, Cincinnati.com published an article listing fifty-one breweries in the area including fifteen I’ve yet to visit. There is also an unvisited-by-me brewery in the ten listed by the Dayton CVB. The Ohio Craft Brewers Association reports that there are now more than 300 breweries operating in the state which means I could reach the next multiple of a hundred without crossing a state line — but I doubt I will.

Memorial Day Eve

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I know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and I’ve sometimes been critical of those who don’t. The publication date for this article is the day before Memorial Day which means it’s my official Memorial Weekend post. The article’s primary focus is the funeral of a U.S. Army veteran who died peacefully at the age of ninety. He clearly does not fit the definition of the folks that Memorial Day was created to honor. On one hand, I’m not completely comfortable having the subject of my Memorial Weekend post be someone who should not be connected to the holiday in any way at all. On the other hand, there’s a very good chance that I would not have attended Hezekiah Perkins’ funeral if it did not take place during Memorial Weekend. That statement is quite possibly true of almost everyone who did attend his funeral on Saturday.

I first saw his name on Friday afternoon. I’d been looking for Memorial Day related activities when local news sources posted a story from Spring Grove Cemetery. The Korean War veteran had purchased a plot and paid for his funeral twenty years ago. Arrangements were progressing to assure that the ceremonies included military honors. There was no question about a proper funeral and burial taking place; There was a big question about who would attend. None of Perkins’ family lived close enough or were healthy enough to come. The cemetery was asking people to join their employees and a small detachment of soldiers in saying a final farewell.

The response was impressive and heartwarming. I arrived about fifteen minutes before the scheduled ceremony and had to park roughly half a mile away. Others parked much farther away than that. Not only was the crowd large, it was racially and generationally diverse. As might be expected, the largest single category was definitely military veterans

Many of those veterans arrived on motorcycles in parade formation. My unscientific guess is that somewhere between fifty and a hundred motorcycles rolled by the grave site. The motorcycles were parked and their riders walked back to where the hearse that had followed them now stood. Friday’s announcement had said the Spring Grove employees would act as pallbearers but that was very much unnecessary. That chore was quite willingly handled by a pre-selected group of motorcyclists.

The ceremonies were brief but meaningful. A detail from Fort Knox removed and folded the flag that covered the coffin. Although the word “thousands” has slipped into a headline or two, most references to the crowd say “hundreds”. My own guess as to crowd size, made while I was part of it, is 400-500. A few, such as workers at the nursing home where he lived most recently, actually knew Hezekiah Perkins but the vast majority were complete strangers. There is certainly no reason to get too puffed up about standing in the grass for a few minutes on a nice spring day, but it’s an unquestionably nice thing that so many Cincinnatians did just that and made that final farewell quite a bit louder than it would have been otherwise.

The Spring Grove visit occurred in the afternoon. I started the day with the Butrims and breakfast at the Anchor Grill followed by traipsing around my favorite bridge. A previous visit had left the couple firmly split on Cincinnati chili but I got a 2-0 favorable vote on goetta. We have been digital friends for a while but this was our first meeting in the analog world. The visit came in the middle of a Kentucky focused trip which, like all of their many road trips, is being reported semi-realtime on Facebook. See Anna’s version here and Joe’s here.

Rabbit Hash via Ferry

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The town of Rising Sun, Northwest Territory, was laid out on the north bank of the Ohio River in 1814. A couple of years later, the area containing the town was included in the new state of Indiana. Folks were also settling on the south bank about that time, and a ferry operated in the vicinity as early as 1813 to connect the two communities. In 1831, a large building was constructed on the Kentucky side to store cargo before and after being transported on riverboats, and a small village called Carlton grew up around it. Eventually, Carlton became Rabbit Hash and that 1831 building became the Rabbit Hash General Store.

A series of ferries operated here until 1945 when the Mildred was crushed by ice. The 73 year gap in service came to an end on September 29 when the MS Lucky Lady began carrying cars and people between Rising Sun and Rabbit Hash. I headed over to check it out on Tuesday and my first view of the new ferry is recorded in the opening picture which shows her leaving Kentucky. The picture at left shows her arriving in Indiana. I wasn’t ready to leave the state just yet so did not catch the next crossing. I would be back.

One of the things I wanted to do before departing Rising Sun was visit the Rising Star Casino. As many times as I’d visited and even stayed in Rising Sun, I had never been inside the casino. When it originally opened (as Grand Victoria) in 1996, the riverboat housing the casino was required to “cruise” so it hauled patrons a few hundred feet into the river and back on a regular schedule. Somewhere along the way, that requirement vanished. I passed through the building to which the boat is now permanently moored and onto the casino. It’s mostly slot machines with one area filled with some table games such as poker, roulette, and craps. The thing at least still looks like a boat and the top deck is accessible. On the far left of the third photo, the ferry (enlarged here) is approaching its Kentucky landing.

Crossings at fifteen minute intervals are advertised and that seems about right to me. I snapped that first picture just as the ferry approached the dock. Capacity is ten cars and one of the crew told me they were pretty much at capacity throughout both of the two weekends they have been open. I saw loads of four to six today. I was the last of five cars to board for my trip, but they split the first four and put me front and center. A round trip costs $8. I traveled one-way for $5.

This is the Kentucky side dock with a decent sized staging area. The crew member I spoke with said that travel had been pretty steady in both directions with a slight edge to Indiana, i.e., casino, bound traffic. I’m sure that’s what was hoped for when Rising Star decided to spend $1.7 million on the ferry and access roads. Play at the casino can earn free ferry rides.

In February of 2016, that building erected in 1831 caught fire and burned to the ground. It was rebuilt using pieces of other old buildings in the exact image of itself. My comment on walking in the door was, “It’s like you never left.” It really wasn’t gone very long. It reopened in May of 2017, less than fifteen months after the fire. I visited Rabbit Hash twice while the rebuilding was in progress but this was my first time there after the reopening. It’s rather embarrassing to realize that it took me longer to get inside the new store than it took to build it. The rebuild is a phenomenal accomplishment in not just time but in attention to historic accuracy. The town has a fascinating history and a very interesting present. A lot about both can be learned at the Rabbit Hash General Store website.

The Rising Star Casino is quite visible from Rabbit Hash although the two are not directly across the river from each other. Rabbit Hash is directly across from the heart of Rising Sun. The ferry does not connect precisely to any of the three. The Indiana landing is just under a mile from the casino and the Kentucky landing is about a mile and a half from Rabbit Hash. That latter measurement is along the narrow Lower River Road. The road is well maintained but not wide enough to support heavy two way traffic. The signed route to and from the ferry is longer but safer.

This is not associated in any way with the ferry or either of the towns it connects. It’s where I stopped for breakfast on the way to Rising Sun and I think it deserves a mention. The State Line Restaurant appeared in an online search and sounded interesting. It’s on US-50 on the Indiana side of the state line it is named after, and every bit as interesting as I’d hoped. The breakfast menu offered plenty of variety but listed a single “special” at the top. The special included goetta. Not “choice of goetta, bacon, or sausage”. Just goetta. No substitutions. That seemed significant and it was.

When I asked, my waitress said yes, they do make their own goetta. Goetta is an oatmeal and pork concoction served by most restaurants in the Cincinnati area but few make their own. Glier’s Goetta Company (formerly Glier’s Meats) has a near monopoly on the rest. The fact that the State Line Restaurant strongly featured the local breakfast staple told me it must be something special.

“It’s my grandfather’s recipe”, my waitress, who is also running the place at present, told me. The restaurant has been in operation since 1952. Her mother bought it twenty-two years ago. Mom is currently experiencing some health problems so the next generation is temporarily in charge. The State Line Special, minus an already downed glass of orange juice, is shown at left. It’s $7.50 including the coffee. In addition to the goetta, the excellent strawberry jam beside the toast is made on site. A tray of those little containers was being filled from a fresh batch at the other end of the counter. They also make their own blueberry jam and I was offered a sample to take with me but declined. Yes, I can be very stupid. I’ve already spent five days wondering if the blueberry jam is as good as the strawberry.

Riverside Rotator

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There’s a big wheel standing on edge near the Cincinnati waterfront. Its owner, Skystar, officially calls it America’s Largest Portable Observation Wheel, but even they know that it’s a Ferris wheel to most folks. The 137 foot wheel opened in Cincinnati on September 1 and will be spinning daily through December 2. It arrived in Cincinnati from Norfolk, Virginia, and before that was in Louisville, Kentucky. A friend and I went for a ride on Friday.

I parked on the Kentucky side and walked across the John A Roebling Suspension Bridge. Before heading to Ohio, I slipped down to the water’s edge to take a few pictures. I’m pretty sure that the bronze Mr. Roebling is gesturing toward his very permanent bridge but the sweep of his hand also takes in the temporary Ferris wheel positioned at its northern end.

The maze to the ticket booth and beyond would clearly accommodate a lot more people than were on hand early Friday evening. So would the wheel itself. Each of the 36 gondolas has room for six passengers which means 216 people could be simultaneously spinning in circles if the thing was filled to capacity.

There are a couple of things at play that make full occupancy unlikely. One is the policy of promising “a private experience for passengers” by not putting strangers together in a car. While I personally find chatting with strangers in this sort of situation to often be interesting and fun, that’s evidently not the case for most. Another thing I suspect will help fend off worries about filling every seat is the $12.50 ticket price for a fifteen minutes or so ride. I’ve seen a minimum of four revolutions advertised and we got six… or maybe seven. It’s a cool experience and one that individuals and couples will likely consider worth the cost. Families of any size with kids over two (under two ride free) likely won’t.

Addendum: A friend tells me that on the opening weekend the wheel was full, there were long lines, and strangers did indeed ride together. Here’s hoping that happens again someday.

With virtually no line, we were soon on board and in motion. The wheel stands between Cincinnati’s two stadia. That’s Great American Ball Park in the background of the second picture and Paul Brown Stadium in the background of the third. Yes, it is possible to see and photograph both of them without the arms of the wheel in the way. GABP (with cohort Great American Tower) is here, and PBS is here. The timing of our ride was such that the setting sun was aimed directly at us as we faced west. That’s why I used the neighboring gondola as a sun-shield and why the picture’s still extra crappy.

The most scenic views were away from the city and generally involved the river and the Roebling Bridge. The bridge was almost lined-up straight-on for the second photo. In the third, it’s in the background as we duck behind the “Sing the Queen City” sign.

As sometimes happens when your view is greatly expanded, we were witnesses to a bit of drama. In the first picture, the grey car on the left side is clearly facing the wrong way for the lane it is in on the two way bridge. A trailing black streak across the yellow stripe can be seen with a close look. We spotted the incident near the end of our ride and before long were walking past it. Apparently the right front wheel had let go and threw the car into the opposing lane. A head on collision was somehow avoided.

We ate dinner in Kentucky as the sun continued to set which made a brief stop near where I’d taken my first Ferris wheel pictures more than worthwhile. I had a tripod in the car and using it would have also been more than worthwhile but I was too lazy. Several photographers who weren’t too lazy were standing nearby and no doubt taking superior photographs. I put these here so that you’ll immediately know what those superior photos are superior to when you see them.