Welcome back to #TravelThursday. This post is all about the great state of Ohio. My brother lived there on two separate occasions during the early-to-mid-2000s (Columbus area) and from 2013 to 2019 (Cincinnati area). My sister-in-law was born and raised there (Upper Sandusky area). My favorite canine nephew was born there in 2017 (Amish Country).
Just as with Indiana (which I wrote about last week) – my first visit to Ohio was a drive-through way back at the end of October of 1985 as an 18-year-old. I had just graduated from Tech School at Chanute Air Force Base adjacent to Rantoul Illinois, and I was driving back to my teenage home in Fairfax County Virginia to visit my parents, brother, and cat. I drove I-70 225 miles from west to east across Ohio. (I may have taken I-270 around Columbus.)
I visited my brother often both times he lived in Ohio – flying in and out of Port Columbus International Airport (#CMH) and Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky International Airport (#CVG).
Sometime in 2003 or 2004 me and my brother went on a road-trip northeastward from Columbus. We visited the Pro Football Hall-Of-Fame in Canton; although, I don’t remember ever visiting it. My brother insists that we did, so he may be right. I do remember us driving to downtown Cleveland after that, and we saw a movie. We probably ate somewhere nice before or after the movie, but I don’t remember which movie it was or where we ate. (That was long before the arrival of the smart phone, so no pictures apparently exist of that road-trip.)
A year or two later we went to the Great American Ball Park in downtown Cincinnati to watch the Reds get routed by the Astros 9-0. Ohio native Roger Clemens was the winning pitcher – a month shy of his 43RD birthday.
We visited Ohio Caverns up in the hills of western Ohio (about 12 miles from the highest point in the state). We went there a couple of times more than 10 years apart. That was a lot of fun. The first time I flew in to Cincinnati / Northern Kentucky in May 2014 – our very first stop was at the American Sign Museum. The next day we visited the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. 18 months later we visited nearby Dayton and the National Museum Of The United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
We visited downtown Cincinnati often and attended a few sports events (wrestling and hockey) and a music concert at the U.S. Bank Arena (now known as the Heritage Bank Center).
I loved visiting Ohio – more so in the warm summertime rather than the frigid wintertime. I was actually disappointed when my brother announced in 2019 that he and his family would move away (again) to the Dallas Texas area (again).
My last day in Ohio was the day after Thanksgiving of 2018 when my brother took me to the airport for my flight back home to Miami.
Soon I’ll be visiting Ohio again as part of my Ohio River cruise. On the third day of the cruise we’ll be docking in Cincinnati. I signed-up for a morning tour and an afternoon tour. Both are 3 hours each. The morning tour is at the Cincinnati Reds Hall-Of-Fame & Museum. The afternoon tour is mostly inside a luxury coach bus with various stops along the way. A couple of days later we’ll be docking upstream in Marietta Ohio. I’ll be visiting a historic house museum as part of a guided tour.
Next #TravelThursday – I’ll look back at past visits to “The Mountain State” – West Virginia. Let’s keep traveling together.
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