Tag Archives: Ohio

Trains, Blues, and Automobiles

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This was an incredibly busy weekend in southwest Ohio. A list limited to things I was personally interested in includes the Lebanon Blues Festival, New Richmond’s Cardboard Boat Regatta, and Paddlefest on Cincinnati’s riverfront. Of these three, the only one I had never attended was Paddlefest so that’s where I thought I’d spend my Saturday morning. By the time the day arrived, steam engine excursions on the Lebanon Mason Monroe Railroad had been added to the list of things of interest to me, and predictions of rain threatened all four (and actually did in Paddlefest).

Plans to head to the river turned into plans to stay home but I kept an eye on the weather. When it looked like there might be a dry window in the afternoon, I booked a seat on the LM&M. I figured that, even if it rained, sitting inside a railroad car wouldn’t be too bad.

I looked over the engine and grabbed photos of the station and the car I’d been assigned. Then it was time to board.

I snapped a picture of the other side of the station as we pulled out. The station is beautifully landscaped by the local garden club. It does not play an active role in passenger handling, however; a ticket counter and gift shop are in a building across the street.

The route isn’t particularly scenic. A green wall of foliage is often quite close although sometimes farm fields open things up a bit. There are even a few art displays that seem to be for the benefit of train passengers.

There are three passenger cars on the train. The one I was in has cloth-covered seats; the other two have vinyl. They were built in 1929 but the conductor wasn’t sure when “my” car was built. She said she had heard dates from 1926 through the ’30s. I walked through all three cars to get a look down the tracks.

Just before the train reached the station, I could see that Broadway was blocked off for a car show associated with the blues festival. After exiting the train, I walked the one block up the hill to see classic cars parked in front of the historic Golden Lamb and on both sides of the street for a couple of blocks.

Then I turned off Broadway to stroll past the many vendors to the music stage. A last-minute cancelation had resulted in The Bluebirds, a familiar and favorite band, being on that stage.

During their set, I got shots of Marcos (and his guitar), Bam, Mike, and Pete.

I took off after that and stopped to grab a picture of the train on its last run of the day. There are few things that are as obvious polluters as a coal-fired locomotive and I’m glad that there aren’t all that many running anymore. But I’m sure glad that there are a few.

Celebrating

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Tuesday was my birthday, and there was a blog post that day more or less announcing it and revealing that I had removed from my body the only thing about it that was getting thinner. This post describes the far-ranging travel and wild celebration that filled the day. The party actually started in early morning when I met my buddy John for breakfast in Wilmington. I left there thinking I might follow US-22 all the way to Steubenville but a prediction of rain prompted me to switch to a shorter path using US-62 at Washington Courthouse, and congestion, as I neared Columbus, nudged me onto a faster expressway route. In fact, I gave myself up to the GPS at that point and Garmin kept me on I-71 until I reached US-30 near Mansfield.

I continued blindly following the voice in the box until a glimpse of a semi-familiar cheese shop brought me to my senses. Shisler’s Cheese House is a place I normally associate with the Lincoln Highway so, after picking up some Swiss and cheddar to munch on later, I sought out a few bits of the old road. I made a side trip in Canton but returned to the old Lincoln and the brick Baywood Street in Robertsville.

The target of my Canton excursion was Fat Head’s newest brewpub at the north edge of town. Fat Head’s started in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1992 and opened this location, their fourth, in 2018. That’s Black Knight Schwarzbier in the glass.

The place that the GPS had been leading me to was the Spread Eagle Tavern in Hanoverton. The picture at the top of this post is of the tavern’s sign. Hanoverton is a Lincoln Highway town so I’ve stopped at the Spread Eagle several times. I have eaten there once but had never stayed there. I corrected that by spending Tuesday night in the Van Buren Room. It’s the inn’s smallest in both space and price but was more than adequate for me.

Between check-in and dinner, I was able to see familiar rooms empty for the first time and make first-time visits to some other spaces. This second group included the lower level rathskeller which is currently open only on Fridays and Saturdays. The tavern first opened in 1837 but had fallen into disrepair until a major restoration took place in the late 1980s. Additions and improvements (such as converting the dirt-floored basement to the brick-lined rathskeller) happened, but all materials came from either the tavern itself or other badly neglected buildings from the same period.

I ate dinner at a table just out of frame on the left side of this picture and breakfast just out of frame on the right. I failed to get a picture of breakfast which is truly sad because it was one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had and it was included with the room. I was just too busy chatting with Kim, my server, about the building and other topics both related and not. I had been better prepared at dinner and did get a snapshot of my wonderful walleye by candlelight. 

Leo da Vinci and the Forty Machines

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I’ve read that, once upon a time, ordinary people rarely needed to count past forty and that forty became another way of saying “a whole bunch”. That implies that Noah and family might not have watched it rain for precisely forty days and nights and that Ali Baba may not have encountered exactly forty bad guys. We have outgrown that, of course, and today use numbers like gazillion when we are tired of counting even though that probably occurs long before we reach forty. That is not, however, the case with this post. The Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion exhibit currently at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton contains exactly forty of Leo’s “machines”.

I took in the exhibit on Friday. It is set against the wall farthest from the entrance which means there is some walking involved. Not only does this provide an opportunity for a little exercise, but there are also plenty of opportunities for getting distracted on the way by the many other, mostly permanent, displays in this wonderful museum. I skipped my favorite gallery, Early Years, and focused on the da Vinci exhibit and still spent at least as much time getting to and from it as I did experiencing it. It’s simply impossible to ignore all those unusual planes and their engaging stories.

A fair number of the displayed machines have to do with flight. That is certainly appropriate for the Air Force Museum although the exhibit’s makeup was not tuned for the location. In fact, this appearance seems to be a recent addition that is not yet listed on the schedule at the Machines in Motion website.

The high ceiling at the museum allows some of da Vinci’s concepts to be suspended overhead as if in flight although they sometimes have to share space with flying things of more recent vintage. The overhead displays include the “parachute” in the opening photograph. The version here is not quite full size. A full-sized version and a description of a real-world use of the design were part of the Da Vinci the Genius exhibit I saw in Cincinnati in 2016.

Leonardo’s flying machines may not have been practical but many of his other ideas certainly were. I don’t believe it is a proven fact that he invented ball bearings but his design of a revolving stage using them might have been their first practical application. His designs for converting one form of motion to another (e.g., rotary to linear) were definitely practical. Check out the kid getting a real hands on education in the background of the second picture. The third picture shows a machine combining several devices to raise heavy pillars.

Seeing this machine for grinding concave mirrors was a real learning experience for me. The sign next to it talks about burning mirrors and mentions that one of their uses was welding. Believing that welding was at best an eighteenth-century concept, I had to look into that and discovered that the welding of soft metals like gold and copper goes back much further and was rather common in da Vinci’s day.

The exhibit runs through May 8 and, like the museum itself, is free.

Benny’s Back

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The last Saturday of January 2021 came and went without fireworks or other hoopla in Buckeye Lake, Ohio. That’s normally the day of the Buckeye Lake Winterfest but the event, like so many others, fell victim to COVID-19. Interestingly, the previous year’s Winterfest was one of the last pre-pandemic events I attended. The blog entry is here. A December 2020 newspaper article announcing the postponement said organizers were hoping to hold the event in the spring but that seems not to have happened. What attracted me to the event in the first place was its use of Benny the Bass in a Puxsuntawny Phil style role in predicting the timing of warmer weather. Last year, people were not nearly as interested in when winter would end as when the pandemic would. That may actually be true this year as well, but Benny was back on the job in any case.

I was on my way north long before dawn was even thinking about cracking. In 2020, I parked near the brewery and walked to and from the park where Benny makes his prediction. This year, with snow on the ground and near-zero temperatures, I had no desire to do much walking and drove directly to the park. There were a few cars present when I arrived but not many. Before getting out of my car, I decided to drive to the other side of town for coffee.

By the time I returned, Benny and quite a few fans had arrived. I managed to get the closeup of the real Benny at the top of this post before it got too crowded, and I got a shot of the mascot Benny — but not a very good one — a bit later. Removing a glove to take pictures was something I kept to a minimum and taking pictures with both gloves on was something that kept picture quality to a minimum.

In the predawn darkness, the shadow-based method of predicting that groundhogs employ is useless. Instead, a bunch of minnows is dumped into Benny’s tank and a one-minute countdown begins. If the time expires without Benny downing a minnow, six more weeks of winter is to be expected. If a minnow is gone before the time is, we’ll have an early spring. Either way, we get fireworks.

In 2020, the crowd chanted “Eat it, Benny”. This year they seemed too cold to chant much of anything despite the MC leading the more official “Take the Bait. Spring can’t wait.” cheer. That, plus repeated playings of the new Winterfest song, may have done the trick. All the minnows survived until the thirty-second warning and several seconds longer but then…

I took the picture of Benny’s tank and prediction once the area was sufficiently clear of bodies to get a clear view. Once the park was sufficiently clear of cars that I could get out of my parking space, I drove directly to Our Lakeside Diner for the traditional (It is now!) perch and eggs breakfast. Incidentally, this place definitely knows how to serve coffee.

Then it was down the street to the Buckeye Lake Brewery for another tradition. When I was here in 2020, I delayed having a beer until I had walked around the town quite a bit. This year, despite a fourfold increase in temperature since I’d arrived, I had no desire for a stroll of any length. So the perch was quickly followed by a Winterfest Ale and that was quickly followed by my departure for home.

A Cosmic Reason for the Season — Reredux

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The following article first appeared in 2019 then reappeared in 2020 when the Fort Ancient winter solstice sunrise program was canceled. I have seen nothing specifically about the program this year but know that the site will be open between 7 and 10 AM on December 21, the day of the solstice. That’s a Tuesday which is a day that the site is normally closed this time of year. It is clearly being opened for sunrise and a program of some sort seems possible.

The article’s first publication occurred one day after the solstice. The next year, it was one day before. This year it is two days before. That shifting comes from our efforts to make Sol, Luna, and Earth play nice together. Most of this blog’s posts, and all three posts of this article, occur on Sundays. Days of the week usually shift by one each year because seven does not fit evenly into 365. The two day shift between the article’s first and second appearance was because seven is an even worse fit for 366 and 2020 was a leap year. The seven-day week isn’t quite as arbitrary as it might first appear but neither is it an intuitive unit of measure. The moon circles Earth every 29.5 days. The Egyptians divided that into three ten-day periods. Four eight-day Roman weeks or seven-day Babylonian weeks fit less precisely but could be tied, albeit imperfectly,  to the moon’s four phases. The Babylonian seven-day week was spread far and wide by Alexander the Great, and as Rome moved into Alex’s old stomping grounds, it began to think that way too. The western world’s week became pretty much established in 321 CE when Constantine declared that an official Roman week was comprised of seven days. This Sunday post precedes the winter solstice of 2021 by 2 days; 2 days, 4 hours, and 58 minutes to be precise. 

Calendars come and calendars go and Earth just keeps on turning. And it keeps on orbiting, too. The turning bit creates what we call days. The alternating periods of light and dark impact almost all life on the planet and humans adopted the day as a basic unit of measure pretty early on. What we call years comes from Earth orbiting the Sun. There was plenty of time for early humans to stare at the sky and not a whole lot to keep them from doing it. They couldn’t help but notice that things in the sky moved around. In time, some of the more observant among them realized that not all that movement was random and eventually some patterns were noted. I can’t imagine how exciting it was when some smart guy figured out that the sun popped up at the same point about every 365 days. Of course, that “about” would be very important.

The opening photo shows the sun rising yesterday over a “gateway” in the earthen enclosure at Fort Ancient. The photo at left was taken a bit later and includes a small mound inside the enclosure in the foreground. When the mound, gateway, and sunrise align, sunset will follow sooner than on any other day of the year. This is the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. It is the day when the sun is above the horizon for less time than any other day of the year, and yesterday that amounted to 9 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds. Although we talk about Solstice being a day, it is technically just an instant. It is the moment when the Sun is farthest north or south of Earth’s equator. It happens twice each year and happened yesterday at 23:19 EST.

Serpent Mound, another ancient earthen structure containing solar alignments, is a little more than forty miles southeast of Fort Ancient. The serpent’s head is aligned with the Summer Solstice sunset. Body coils align with Summer and Winter Solstice sunrises. For several years, a modern event known as Lighting of the Serpent took place there at Winter Solstice. It was discontinued in 2017. The picture at right is from 2014 which is the only time I attended.

Long before they knew anything about orbits and equators, humans knew the day of Winter Solstice was special. It is the point where each successive day receives more rather than less daylight. It’s the big turnaround that will eventually lead to the warmth of spring and summer. It is clearly a day worth celebrating and it has indeed been celebrated in many different cultures in many different ways.

During their existence, humans have developed a slew of calendar systems. Several actually remain in use today, but the Gregorian calendar is the one most widely accepted. In the late sixteenth century, this started replacing the Julian calendar which had been around for all of those sixteen centuries and then some. The Julian calendar had been created by folks who calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days long which was a lot more accurate than an even 365. They came up with the rather clever idea of adding an extra day every four years to balance things out.

We now know that a year is 365.2422 days long. A year is the length of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, a day is the length of time it takes Earth to rotate, and neither is adjustable. When the Julian calendar was first adopted, the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice fell on December 25 but it slowly drifted away. Someone in authority thought to put an end to this nonsense by declaring December 25 the official solstice. But those non-adjustable orbits and rotations kept doing what they were doing and the official solstice and actual solstice just kept getting farther and farther apart.

The Gregorian calendar, which we have used for roughly 400 years now, put an end to that. Like the Julian calendar, it considers most years to be 365 days long but has a more involved system of “leap years” that add an extra day. The result is that over a long enough period our years will average 365.2422 days in length. Not only did the new calendar eliminate future drift, it tried to correct for some of the previous drift by throwing away ten days. The calendar’s namesake’s full-time job was as Pope of the Catholic Church. Ditching those ten days moved the solstice to December 22 which is where it had been in 325 when the church was founded. Of course, some holidays that had been tied to the official solstice (which hadn’t been anywhere near the actual solstice for some time) would continue to be celebrated on December 25.

Anyone wanting a more complete discussion of calendars, solstices, and holidays will find one here. Additional information on Fort Ancient is available here.

Another Covered County Covered

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When I took in Preble County Covered Bridges a couple of weeks ago, there was actually another Ohio county in the running for the “honor”. Fairfield County rivals Ashtabula County for the number of covered bridges and is much closer. Of course, Preble County is closer still and I decided to save Fairfield for a day when there was a chance that the trees would be more colorful. Friday was that day but, even though there were some mighty colorful trees here and there, I never did find that picturesque little bridge framed with orange and gold that I envisioned.

Unlike the rather spontaneous Preble County jaunt, I actually did some advance planning for this outing. I started at the Charles Holliday Bridge (#1) on the Millersport Lions Club Sweet Corn Festival grounds. This happens to be bridge #1 in the Fairfield County Covered Bridge Trail Guide but I did not visit the bridges in the sequence they are numbered in the guide. I started with the bridge farthest from my home then hit the rest in a very crude horseshoe pattern. The numbers following each bridge name are from the guide, however.

My second stop was at the R.F. Baker Bridge (#12) behind the Fairfield Union School. It’s not visible from the parking lot but directions from a friendly student got me there. This is the closest thing I found to that bridge framed by autumn colors in my mind’s eye. You have probably figured out that this is the bridge in the opening photograph and you may have also figured out that it is my favorite.

The John Raab Bridge (#8) is on private property and some distance from the road. I think it was possible that I could have gotten permission from the owner for a closer look but I just settled for a shot from the road with a longer lens mounted. That lens was still on the camera when I started to pull away and spotted a fox scurrying across the open field.

I made my Preble County bridge post a member of the My Cabbodles series but not this one. The reason is that two of Fairfield County’s listed bridges are inaccessible inside a park that is temporarily closed. I believe the address I had matches that of the pictured house although I saw nothing that indicated a park. Nonetheless, I think Mae Hummel Bridge (#9) and Shade Bridge (#14) are around here somewhere.

Only four of Fairfield County’s seventeen covered bridges remain at their original locations and three of them are pictured here. At first glance, I thought all three might have had the same builder but that’s not so. The Johnston Bridge (#7) was built by Augustus Borneman while the Mink Hollow Bridge (#11) was built by Jacob Brandt. No builder is identified for the Hanaway Bridge (#3).

Both of these bridges have been moved, but they still cross water and they are still in use although traffic is now pedestrian-only. The George Hutchins Bridge (#2) serves foot traffic in Alley Park while the McCleery Bridge (#10) helps folk cross Fetters Run on the Lancaster Bike Path.

The John Bright #2 Bridge (#6) has also been moved, still crosses water, and serves pedestrians. Like the McCleery Bridge, it is on Fetters Run and the Lancaster Bike Path. Its description states that it is the “gateway to Lancaster Festival concerts at Ohio University”. I’m guessing those concerts take place in the large open field beyond the bridge.

Rock Mill Bridge (#13) is the fourth covered bridge in Fairfield County surviving in its original location. The mill after which it is named also survives right next to it. The Fairfield County Covered Bridge Trail Guide claims that “At one time, every U.S. Embassy in the world displayed a photo of Rock Mill Bridge.” I haven’t yet found anything online to explain or confirm that so I’ve sent a query to the Fairfield County Ohio Visitors and Convention Bureau and will update this with any information I receive.

Here’s a bridge that has been relocated to a spot that once had water but no longer does. The Hartman #2 Bridge (#4) now sits astride what was once the Ohio & Erie Canal between Lock 11 South and Lock 12 South. The stone walls of Lock 12 South can be seen beyond the bridge in the third picture.

The Shryer Bridge (#15) is on private property with no obvious place to pull over so I really did grab a driveby shot of it. Inside Sycamore Creek Park, the relocated Zeller-Smith (#17) serves as the entrance to an arboretum. The Stemen House Bridge (#16) was relocated and shortened from 72 to 36 feet in length. Damaged and decayed parts were discarded during the move but the half that was saved was so good that now stands as the only public covered bridge in the county open to vehicles.

I had to add the word “public” to the previous sentence since this privately owned bridge is open to vehicles driven by the owner or friends. The Hizey Bridge (#5) once crossed Poplar Creek but has been moved to form part of an impressive private driveway.

If that park is ever opened and those two other bridges become accessible, I suppose I might go see them. Then I can republish these pictures as a caboodle. But the truth is that I was a little disappointed in the covered bridges of Fairfield County and it had little to do with the two hidden bridges or not finding the perfect wall of orange and gold leaves. It had to do with there being only two drivable bridges (one if you’re me) in the lot and so many that weren’t actually bridges at all anymore. By that, I mean those sitting in fields that don’t cross over anything that needs crossing. By contrast, six of the eight Preble County bridges were drivable and all nine of the Ashtabula County bridges I visited in 2019 were drivable. There are ten other covered bridges in Ashtabula County that I have not visited and about which I’ll make no claims.

On the other hand, even those that were sitting in someone’s yard, crossing nothing and accessible by no one, had escaped destruction. I’m reminded of something Tod Swormstedt of the American Sign Museum often says. According to Tod, the best way to preserve a sign is in its original setting doing what it was designed to do. Preserving them in museums and private collections isn’t nearly as good but is better than the scrap heap. I guess that applies to bridges, too. I prefer my historic bridges in the wild carrying vehicles over some body of water just like they were designed to do. Parks and private settings aren’t nearly as good — but they’re better than the scrap heap.

More Smooth As Glass

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About a month ago, a visit to Jack Pine’s Glass Pumpkin Festival yielded a blog post in which I lamented losing an SD card containing “phenomenal photos”. That card has reappeared and, even though my claims of phenomenality will suffer for it, I’m super happy to share some of its contents. For those who missed it or want to refresh their memories, the original post is here.

In my lament, I mentioned ice cream and music, and here is proof of both. The ice cream was quite good. Perhaps because it wasn’t overly pumpkiny. So was the music, but, sadly, I don’t know the name of the fellow entertaining us. If I heard it at the festival, I’ve forgotten, and, while the online schedule is still accessible, it shows a gap between 2:00 and 4:30. The picture was taken about 3:25.

Numerous artists were offering items for sale at the festival and not everything was made of glass and resembled a pumpkin. There were also some vendors selling food at the festival but none that made me want to take a picture.

But, yeah, glass items dominate the festival. It is, after all, hosted by a glass studio. At first glance, things that resemble pumpkins might also seem to dominate the festival, but I’m not so sure. Outside of the Jack Pine Pumpkin Patch, there sure are lots of non-pumpkin pieces.

Several artists were at work inside the studio making glass pumpkins. They would frequently hold out their work as it progressed and explain what they were doing. These non-stop demonstrations alone were easily worth the drive and the price of admission, and the items produced really are phenomenal even if these pictures aren’t.    

Following Morgan

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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

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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

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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.