6-24-2021 - Thursday
Sadly, we left our Ft. Wayne family and headed down the road this morning. The good thing is that we are now getting closer to the Florida grandkids. We didn't have sewer at our campsite, so after we got dumped, we were on the road by 8:50. It was 64 degrees this morning, but got to 86 by end of day (in Kentucky). We followed Dixie's directions and got out of town without incident, and headed across the country.
We fueled in Ft. Wayne, right after we left this morning, for $3.159. Joe had noticed all the stations in Ft. Wayne seemed to have the same price. In Ohio, we saw gas for $2.899, then $2.889. It ticked him off -- he was ready to dump that tank and buy it again! Then in the next town, North Star, gas was $2.859. I said, "I'm not going to tell you gas here is $2.85." He said, "I saw it, but I wasn't going to tell you either."
We passed Grand Lake in Celina, Ohio, a huge, beautiful lake right at the edge of town, and right next to the highway. Joe thinks he remembers a bad tornado destroying part of Celina some years ago.
We crossed the Ohio state line at 9:40, and found Hwy 127 before Dayton which kept us off the interstate until just before Cincinnati, so we enjoyed seeing the farm ground. The farmers are in the fields now, and on the roads in front of us. The corn and wheat are getting a little taller as we head south. But no lilacs any more. Sadly.
Not all of these little towns have the hanging baskets, but some do. One town had big pots of flowers on the main street through town.
Another, Rockford, had a ice cream store with a roof full of flowers.
As we are cruising along, Joe points out a big rooster statue on his side of the road. I tried to get a picture, but just got a picture of him instead.
I told him he needed to give me more warning so I could grab the camera. He immediately yelled, "car on post, car on post." I got that picture! (It helped that it was on my side of the road.)
We passed another huge building back off the highway a little. I thought maybe it was a Morman temple because I could see a gold cross on top, but the sign said it was a Senior Living Center. Very nice looking.
Things were going well, we were making good time, then we come to this!
It took us west about 5 miles, through some little town, Anastoria, or something like that. Joe mumbled, "We weren't supposed to go to Anastoria today. It wasn't on the schedule." The detour brought us down state road 49 to Hamilton, then we cut over to I-75. That turned out to be a wonderful thing, because look what Joe found, right on the highway.
Joe had said he thought he would like to take a break before tackling Cincinnati, so we had been looking for a restaurant, but he hit the jackpot, cause that's what he really wanted. And it turned out to be a good thing, because Cincinnati was a problem. We got along fine until we got to the last 5 miles before the bridge over the Ohio River, and then traffic came to a halt. It took us over an hour to go those 5 miles. It took a long time to even to get to the split of I-75 and I-71, but even that didn't improve our two lanes.
And there was almost a wreck in the I-71 lanes. It was moving a lot better than ours and cars and trucks were flying through there, then all of a sudden it slowed down too, and one car had to slam on the brakes. He must have been going 60+ and traffic was a complete stop. He burned some rubber and managed not to swerve into our lanes but it was a close call.
We finally got close to the river. I kept looking for the baseball stadium, and thought I found it, but it turned out to be TQL Stadium, a soccer-specific stadium opened May 16, 2021, with a seating capacity of 26,000. We couldn't see it very well but it looked pretty impressive.
I finally got a partial shot of what I think is Great American Ball Park, where the Cincinnati Reds play. We used to come over to Riverfront Stadium to watch them when we lived in Terre Haute -- they were "our" team (Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, etc.). I'm not sure if this is the right place (can't see the red seats), but it was at the exit to the stadium. And I had plenty of time for pictures along here, just didn't have a good view.
I even got a shot of downtown Cincinnati.
We finally got to the river, and the source of the traffic problem. They are sandblasting and painting the bridge, have it completely covered, and the four lanes of traffic reduced to two. So now it's like a tunnel.
I got just a glimpse of the river before we entered the covered bridge.
Finally, finally we crossed into Kentucky at 1:55. It's only about 40 miles from Hamilton (White Castle) to the state line, and it took us 1 hour and 25 minutes. The back up in the lanes going the other way, going into Cincinnati, was about 6 miles, possibly more. But we were moving good now.
By this time, Joe thought Lexington sounded like a good place to stop for the night, about 80 miles more. There is little camping that I found in that area, a horse park with bad reviews (unlevel, muddy if it rains), and a state park I called and found they will be closed until August due to flooding from March. So we ended up at a Cabela's again, our new best friend on this trip.
One potential problem here, when we turned off the interstate and onto the road to the campground, we came upon this sign. Joe said, "And they think they have TRAFFIC problems."
That could be worse than a thunderstorm! There's a lot of construction in this area, so we will see if we get disturbed tonight. We pulled into a long parking spot in the designated area, and took a nap. When we got up, there was a 5th wheel angle-parked right in front of our RV, and a guy with a hose over at an irrigation box right beside us. Joe kept trying to figure out what he was doing -- finally decided he was filling up his water tank on the 5th wheel -- stealing water? We had read there used to be a dump station at this Cabela's, but they no longer had it, so Joe finally decided we must be parked right beside that. By then, the guy is finished and putting his hose away. Joe finally went out and asked if there was a dump station here, and he said yes, so apparently he had been here before. Joe thought we should move over a space in case anyone else came in for water, so that's what we did. Then we left to get some dinner. Well, that was another experience. On the way to dinner, I saw this statue -- remember, Kentucky is a "horse" state. Catalina could have posed for this picture.
I had picked Cracker Barrel (one of my favorites), and it was just back at the intersection we had exited on. We got there, the patio was pretty full of people in rocking chairs, and there was this sign.
Of course Joe, old "authorized personnel only" disregarder, just heads on in. But there was a 45-60 minute wait because they were limiting the seating, more than social distancing it looked to us. Nevertheless, we left there, googled more options, and chose Frish's Big Boy (we had good experience in Michigan at Big Boy, and he liked their salad bar). So back up on the interstate, down one mile, and exiting again. We found it, went in, no salad bar (there were only 2 cars in the parking lot, besides the drive-through). We asked about the salad bar, and the waitress said they were never going to have it again. I asked if Kentucky wasn't fully vaccinated, and she said no, there were only about 200,000 people vaccinated. I googled it later, and statistics show 49% for Kentucky. Anyhow, we drove around the parking lot to a Mexican restaurant, Chuys, and finally had dinner. And believe me, we wore our masks in. But this was a good choice, because they had this picture in the lobby.
While we were eating dinner, I checked Brandon, Florida's weather for next week. I have to question the wisdom of this destination, but that's where our babies are. Bridgette keeps telling us that it rains every day. Looks like she was telling the truth.
When we got back to the RV, Joe decided to get the bugs off the windshield. I had mentioned that those bugs were affecting the quality of my pictures. (I didn't tell him I just learned that I could "spot remove" some of them, but there were still too many to do that.) He came in all sweaty, but he got the job done.
It was a full day, even though we stopped about 3:40. Bridgette kept checking to see if we were there yet. We drove 263 miles today, but some of them were really slow. That was enough for us.
