August 2, 2016
Necessity is the mother of ascension
We said goodbye for now to the Ohio River when we left Augusta this morning. It would be worth a return trip, perhaps a weekend excursion from Columbus, to visit the Parkview hotel in Augusta. The walk along the banks of the Ohio is very relaxing.
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Some Ohio River considerations:
1)On day 41 we were in Pittsburgh at the birth place of the Ohio River. Three weeks later, on day 62, we arrived back at the Ohio River at Aurora Kentucky. If we had tossed a message in a bottle (a durable bottle that wouldn't break, and a lucky bottle that wouldn't get stuck in an eddy or snagged on the bank) into the Ohio back in Pittsburgh, where would that message be 3 weeks later? Would it have beaten us to Aurora?
2)The Ohio River forms the boundary between Ohio and West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, Indiana and Kentucky, and between Illinois and Kentucky. Obviously parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois drain directly into the Ohio River. Can you name 8 other states that partially drain into the Ohio watershed?
Don't Google the answer or look at a map, that's no fun...
3)How does the Ohio River stack up length wise against the St Lawrence River and the Columbia River?
Because we had a lot of climbing (for us) on tap we decided to have breakfast at the Parkview before we left, even though breakfast wasn't served until 8:15. It was a good breakfast, lots of protein options, plus a plate of what I assumed were glazed donuts. Closer inspection, with my mouth, revealed that these were fried and glazed biscuits. I don't know if this is a regional specialty, or perhaps I have simply lead a sheltered life, but it was my first experience with biscuit donuts. Technically my first and second experiences, since I had two.
The first two miles this morning were surprisingly flat. That's because we followed a road along the river for a mile until we came to some bridge construction that had closed the road, then turned around and took the same road back to our starting point.
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We hit the reset button and came up with an alternate route away from the Parkview. This time the road was not closed, but the first two miles were up a steep hill. The view at the top was worth it. Not really, I just felt obligated to say that, but it was a nice view.
Climbing that first hill made us nervous about descending. In a couple of places the pavement in a section of the downward lane was missing and just replaced by gravel. It's no problem to run into a patch of gravel when climbing at 4 mph, but not something we wanted to encounter on our way down. As it turned out that was the only dicey section. Almost all the other roads today had excellent pavement and almost no traffic. They did however have a tendency to go up.
All of the farming is up on ridge tops. There were some small tobacco fields, but mostly hay and livestock.
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