Yesterday we drove from Syracuse, NY to Oxford, OH. We took interstates most of the way because MapQuest estimated the drive at 9 ½ hours and we hoped to get there in time for my friend Diane to give us a tour of the town. Unfortunately, it took more like 11 hours of driving! Still, we got there in time for dinner. Appropriately enough, I met Diane several years ago during a long delay in a Chicago airport. She let me use her phone to make a new reservation after our flight was canceled and we ended up hanging out for a few hours finding mutual interests in plants and the outdoors.
We stayed at a nice inn on the Miami University campus (site of one of Jake’s first job interviews!). Beautiful rolling hills harbor the town and the campus is a classic college campus with an arboretum, gardens and brick buildings. The town was hopping with a concert in the town center. It seemed very much a college town with a wide assortment of restaurants and shops. After dinner we stopped at Diane’s house to meet her several cats. Like many college towns, there are many stray cats and they are kind enough to have adopted several that have shown up in their backyard. Diane is rapidly converting her lawn into garden areas and it is a great cat playground!
Local pronunciations of names are often interesting. We ate lunch yesterday on Lake Erie in the town of Conneaut (CON-ee-ot) (see photo), and tonight we are in Cape Girardeau (KAYP jeer-ar-DOO). We also passed a sign for Versailles (ver-SAYLS). Today’s route was almost entirely rural through southern Indiana and Illinois. Much more beautiful than I had anticipated! Rolling hills and high bluffs along some of the rivers. As we passed over the Wabash on the Indiana/Illinois border there was a great deal of flooding. We saw one house half underwater in the floodplain and numerous flooded fields. At the end of the day we reached the Mississippi River where the Wabash joins it at Cairo, IL.
The town of Cairo is a ghost of its former self. Several imposing government buildings including a US courthouse still stand, but most of town has large gaps and abandoned buildings. Whole blocks of storefronts are boarded up. The community seemed mostly African American. We had planned to camp outside town in a state park, but the park was abandoned and half-flooded. A monument to Lewis and Clark stood at the confluence of the rivers where they had apparently taught the company to use a sextant and compass for mapping. Going outside town the other direction to Horseshoe Lake, we did find a campground, but it was also very wet and far from town and dinner. We stopped to admire the cypress trees in the lake. I never knew cypress grew this far west! It really was beautiful with the sun setting and fishermen and herons enjoying the lake’s bounty.
Religion makes a big statement in Indiana driving through. I have never seen so many anti-abortion billboards and religious messages along the roadsides. Good to get some perspective on what other parts of the country think about! Between that and Cairo’s depression, the Midwestern vote for different presidential candidates really becomes clearer.
We drove on to Cape Girardeau across the Mississippi in Missouri. This downtown seemed pretty prosperous and lively, but we couldn’t find a hotel downtown. After driving back towards the interstate, we got the second to last room in town apparently - the crowds due to a softball tournament and several large weddings. A large cement wall holds the Mississippi back from downtown.
Tomorrow we plan to limit ourselves to more like 350 miles instead of 500!
Local pronunciations of names are often interesting. We ate lunch yesterday on Lake Erie in the town of Conneaut (CON-ee-ot) (see photo), and tonight we are in Cape Girardeau (KAYP jeer-ar-DOO). We also passed a sign for Versailles (ver-SAYLS). Today’s route was almost entirely rural through southern Indiana and Illinois. Much more beautiful than I had anticipated! Rolling hills and high bluffs along some of the rivers. As we passed over the Wabash on the Indiana/Illinois border there was a great deal of flooding. We saw one house half underwater in the floodplain and numerous flooded fields. At the end of the day we reached the Mississippi River where the Wabash joins it at Cairo, IL.
The town of Cairo is a ghost of its former self. Several imposing government buildings including a US courthouse still stand, but most of town has large gaps and abandoned buildings. Whole blocks of storefronts are boarded up. The community seemed mostly African American. We had planned to camp outside town in a state park, but the park was abandoned and half-flooded. A monument to Lewis and Clark stood at the confluence of the rivers where they had apparently taught the company to use a sextant and compass for mapping. Going outside town the other direction to Horseshoe Lake, we did find a campground, but it was also very wet and far from town and dinner. We stopped to admire the cypress trees in the lake. I never knew cypress grew this far west! It really was beautiful with the sun setting and fishermen and herons enjoying the lake’s bounty.
Religion makes a big statement in Indiana driving through. I have never seen so many anti-abortion billboards and religious messages along the roadsides. Good to get some perspective on what other parts of the country think about! Between that and Cairo’s depression, the Midwestern vote for different presidential candidates really becomes clearer.
We drove on to Cape Girardeau across the Mississippi in Missouri. This downtown seemed pretty prosperous and lively, but we couldn’t find a hotel downtown. After driving back towards the interstate, we got the second to last room in town apparently - the crowds due to a softball tournament and several large weddings. A large cement wall holds the Mississippi back from downtown.
Tomorrow we plan to limit ourselves to more like 350 miles instead of 500!
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