The Indiana-Ohio border
Today we set out late, recovering from the previous night’s festivities outside of Indianapolis. Of course, this meant it was time for the breakfast of champions:
I’ll spare you, dear reader, from any photos of eastern Indiana or western Ohio. The people, I’ve found, were lovely. However, the scenery is dreary in the extreme. Columbus was the first relief for a few hundred miles:
I’m unfamiliar with the headwear of these nice ladies. Mennonites perhaps?
A placard at this eastern Ohioan rest stop shows the route of the Eisenhower Highway, which links California with Virginia. As much as a critic of big government projects as I am, you really can’t deny the many benefits the Interstate Highway system has brought to our nation. We made it all the way across a continent, stopping to carouse liberally, in under a week. Infrastructure is good:
The landscape of eastern Ohio is far more refreshing than the west. I had no idea that the area was so densely forest. Deciduous forests still blow my mind:
Proof that, even in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on I-77, people still have the desperate need for hot transsexual on donkey action:
Crossing the Ohio river, into West Virginia:
We decided to stop early in Parkersburg, WV, where we dined on fried chicken and beer. The KFC biscuits are superior here:
We’ll be banging around West Virginia for the next few days, visiting some of Cornflake’s extended relatives. I’ll see which stereotypes I can dispel about this interesting little state, and which I can reinforce with cruel glee.
Talk to you all soon.
Beautiful trees.
The readers need an update on your provisions. What’s the status of the Bombay we saw in WA?
I’ve driven that stretch of highway many times between Indianapolis and Washington DC. Driving across Ohio was always the most dreadful because it was long and flat, and the cops are particularly intense about raising revenue for the state’s coffers… I’d renamed Ohio to Mainland China.
Go a little further north and the country is all hills. Go a little further south and the country is also all hills. Blame the government for putting the highway where they did.
If you want flat, go from Oxford, Ohio through Columbus, Indiana and then across Illinois. Little bit of hills at Illinois border then flat, flat, flat.
What I find to be really interesting is that when I use to drive from my parents house in Missouri, the interstate would start off hilly and curvy and at 70 MPH speed limits. Then you’d run into Illinois which was flat and had 65 mph speed limits. They also had cops who were raising revenue for the states. This would continue all the way across Ohio and then you’d hit West Virginia where the interestates again get curvy and hilly and the speed limit goes back up. Also, the cops are few and far between in MO or WV. Figure that one out.
Regarding the trees, I have read that prior to the arrival of the evil white man a squirrel could go from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi without touching ground, but I can’t recall where. What is also amazing is to look at the trunks of the trees. Few are over 100 years old. All this reforestation of a despoiled rainforest in less than 100 years without Federal or NGO assistance, amazing.
I’ve become somewhat partial to the old National Road route from Chicago via Indianapolis to east coast locations south of Baltimore. It’s somewhat less heavily trafficked than the 90-80-76 route, and there’s only a short section of toll road — the wretched Pennsylvania Turnpike, alas, to contend with.